 Okay, it's time I finally make a worldbuilding analysis on the worst YA series ever written. I know that's a bold claim to make. In a genre that includes things like Ash Princess and The Selection, both of which I've reviewed on this channel, how could this relatively unknown series possibly be the worst? Well, I've already spent a lot of time complaining about the first two books in this Nightmare of a Trilogy. I hate literally everything about it, from the characters that cause nothing but trouble wherever they go, to the story that meanders about following the aforementioned pricks, to the prose that tries way too hard to be poetry but just feels like Tolkien's leftovers. But more than anything else, well, more than anything except Anna, I despise the world it takes place in. Part of the reason I waited so long to do this video is because I've already complained a lot about how this supposed world of magic, monsters, and revolutions makes no fucking sense and I didn't want to repeat myself. However, with the final book coming out soon, I figured the time was right to reiterate my earlier points as well as to go into more detail about the pure shittiness of this fictional version of 1847. To be clear, I'm not saying that the setting is unlikable or boring or based on stupid ideas, though all of those definitely, definitely apply, I'm saying that this is probably the most incoherently constructed world that I've ever come across. So let's get started with a quick recap. Also this is only based on information from the first two books, if anything comes up in the third book that changes my views on this I'll make another follow-up video to correct myself, and there will be spoilers ahead. You have been warned. Blood Rose Rebellion takes place in 1847 and the world is exactly like ours. Every country, leader, religion, and historical event all seem to be exactly the same. And that's why this is a story about a simple young aristocrat getting swept up in history and viewing the failed 1848 Hungarian Revolution from the ground while she finds love, right? Of course not. There's also magic, because ffffuck me. Okay, joking aside, in this world there are people called Luminators that can use magic. But the only people who can become Luminators are those granted permission by a group of aristocrats called a Luminate Circle, who can and can't use magic used to be random before Emperor Charlemagne and some other Luminators crafted a spell called the Binding that allowed the circles to take control. There were also various magical creatures wandering around called Pratheria, who were imprisoned in another dimension by the Binding, causing most people a thousand years later to believe that they're fairy tales. Fast forward to 1847 and the main story kicks in. An English aristocrat named Anna Arden, who can't use magic properly, is forced to go to Hungary for several stupid reasons that I won't get into right now because I don't want to get a headache. At the time, Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire, so while she's there she finds out about an independence movement as well as a movement to break the iron grip of the mages and set up a more democratic government. The two movements form a sort of alliance and through various magical happenings they convince Anna to break the binding, which both frees the Pratheria and allows normal people to start using magic again. Then the revolutionaries take advantage of the chaos to push the Austrians out of Budapest and achieve a sort of quasi-independence. That's a lot to take in, so I'll just have to tackle all of the problems one at a time. I feel like this goes without saying, but I have to put it out there just to make sure that we're all on the same page. Human history would not have been anywhere close to what it was IRL if people could use magic and there were monsters running around. The earliest referenced event in the first two Blood Rose Rebellion books is Emperor Charlemagne creating the binding. This probably happened around the height of his power a little after the year 800, so I guess the Franks still emerged along the Rhine River sometime before the 3rd century CE and they still conquered the former provinces of the Roman Empire in Gaul and then in the 8th century Charlemagne's parents still met and fucked at the exact same time and place which caused him to be born at the exact same time and place and then his brother Carlemagne still died which allowed him to take the throne and he still conquered most of central and western Europe and he removed the Lombards from power in Italy which caused him to be named the Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Pascale the 3rd. The book specifically calls him Emperor Charlemagne which means he must have become the Holy Roman Emperor at some point. Most European rulers were called Kings for that very reason. They were beneath the Emperor at least in theory because for some complex theological reasons the Emperor of Rome was considered the ruler of Christendom which is also why the Holy Roman Empire is called Roman even though it was centered in Germany. Also does that mean that Christianity still emerged in the exact same time and the exact same way? I could go on like this forever but I think you get the point. If there were intelligent magical creatures running around then they would most likely take sides in these conflicts which is bound to make them go in different directions saying with humans throwing around fireballs. Imagine if Illuminator Assassin was able to kill Charlemagne during a battle his entire empire would completely change direction overnight. More than that a lot of specific real-world events just wouldn't make sense in this setting. If only aristocrats could use magic under the binding why couldn't the British have held on to their American colonies? Why would Christianity become the dominating religion in Europe if there were literal pagan gods roaming around? If magic and praetaria were around the world that Anna lives in wouldn't just be different it would be completely unrecognizable. Another good example has to do with Islam and its relationship with magic. At one point it's mentioned that Muslims can't use magic due to religious reasons. At the same time they've conquered all the same territory from Christian nations that they did in the real world, just check out this map. They apparently used Janissaries to do their magic fighting for them but they didn't exist until 1363 and at that point Muslims had already conquered former Christian lands from Palestine to Spain. Thus Christians in this world just decided to let themselves be ruled out of politeness that doesn't make any fucking sense. Some of you may remember that one of the first books I reviewed on this channel was Battlesaurus Rampage at Waterloo which was about Napoleon Bonaparte using dinosaurs in his army. The existence of dinosaurs alongside humans would have radically altered history just as much as magic but the author acknowledges that in a note and says he just wanted to write about Napoleonic dinosaurs so I'm forgiving of that. Pulpy Nonsense has its place after all. Blood Rose Rebellion doesn't have any sort of qualifier like that. In fact Rosalind Eves gives a long list of reference books which gives off the false impression that this is some sort of well thought out historical novel instead of a fantasy book that occasionally references real people. And what really bothers me is that some people are going to read these books and get a false impression of what happened in the real Hungarian Revolution. Understanding history is not about knowing what happened, it's about knowing why it happened, how it happened, and how that shaped the world we live in today. If people misunderstand how small changes in the past can lead to large changes in the present then they'll also misunderstand things like how the socio-economic class you're born into affects your life or why certain groups of people hold more power than others. In other words learning about the past gives context to the present. One of the reasons I like studying history in the first place is that it brings important events and developments into sharp focus, shedding light on how our ancestors gave us the life we live today for good or ill. And as historical novels this series completely fails. I've already explained how these books fail as historical novels but that ties into how they fail as alternate history. And it's more complicated than just the fact that everything is exactly the same but with magic. See in the alternate history community we use the term point of divergence to describe the point at which real history changes to alternate history. Basically a pod asks a what if question. What if Japan didn't bomb Pearl Harbor? What if the CSA won the American Civil War? What if slavery never existed? These differences can be narrow or very broad but they must be identified and expanded upon. That's the difference between an alternate history world and a fantasy world. In the world of BRB magic just sort of exists which I would think means that it has an unspecified prehistoric pod. However the world is exactly the same up until the beginning of the story so it's not really a pod at all. There would have to be some divergence for that. The point at which history actually changes here is in 1847 when Anna breaks the binding and the revolution starts. There was a real Hungarian revolution in 1848 but this one is both earlier and more successful. In a normal alt history book this would be the pod but like I said adding magic is a pod so there was already one before this. Except that one wasn't really a pod because nothing changed and neither is this one because it came after the previous pseudo pod so there's no one point of divergence from real history at all. Both of these changes fall into a weird Schrodinger's cat style dilemma where they're simultaneously the point at which history changes and not and the worst part is that it's not at all easy to see. It took me forever to figure out how to word this properly because even I had trouble figuring out exactly what was wrong with this aspect of the setting. It just boggles my mind how chaotic and nonsensical all of this really is. I'm honestly impressed that Rosalind Eves wrote a book where she tried to combine history and alternate history and no editors or publishers pointed out that that doesn't work at all. History and alternate history are a very rare example of opposing genres. It's literally impossible to combine them and have it make any sort of sense. If someone told me that this series was meant to be some sort of parody of the general shittiness of YA settings I might actually believe them. If Rosalind Eves wanted to write a historical novel she should have just written that. If she wanted to write a fantasy story that takes place on earth then she would have had to change a few things but it could have made some sort of sense. Instead we got this formless mess of a book series that fails at being historical because it's not really historical and it fails at being alternate history because there's no clear reason for why things change from the real world. But that's not all. Because with this series every time I jump into the rabbit hole of shits there's another deeper hole somewhere inside. This setting also fails as a fantasy world. The magic of this world is undeveloped to the point that it doesn't make sense. In this world magic is split into four different orders with different abilities including elemental magic, healing, and affecting the minds of others. There's some talk about how magic involves creating threads of power and then weaving them together but there's not much about what kinds of threads they are or how they work together. We know that magic is powered by life force powerful spells even require sacrificing someone's life to power them but does that mean that someone can accidentally kill themselves by trying to cast a spell that's too powerful? Or will they just get tired? If we don't know the limits of magic then we don't really understand it. In the Wheel of Time series magic also works by weaving different threads together. However there it's explained that there are five different types and that different combinations do different things e.g. combining air threads with fire threads makes lightning. The source of their magic is an infinite well of energy called the one power but each person can only draw in a small amount without hurting themselves. There are some artifacts known as angriel that allow them to draw in more power as well as churangriel which which draw in the one power to perform certain specific tasks. I haven't read those books in almost five years and I could still explain in some detail how an ice sadae could affect someone's mind or create a portal to another location. I would have no idea how illuminator would make a light show other than that they just do. This isn't an inconsistency with the magic system per se it's just a missed opportunity to make this world feel more real. I already said that this fails as a historical setting but the lack of depth to the magic is one way in which it fails as a fantasy setting. There's also the matter of the magic that the romani use. Again it doesn't have much depth given to it all we know is that they can store up energy in objects usually jewelry and then use that energy to cast some basic spells. But if magic comes from soul does that mean the romani are splitting off parts of their souls and putting them in objects? Is this shortening their lives? Are they creating horcruxes? How exactly does this circumvent the binding? I don't know. Also the binding obviously prevents them from using magic the normal way and since we have very little information on how the normal way works I can't really poke holes in this. So this potential plot hole was filled in by never giving enough information to determine if it's a plot hole or not. Congratulations I think. The thing about the magic here that confuses me the most is Anna though. She's what's known as a chimera a human with two souls inside their body. She can't use magic at all at least at the beginning of the books since the two souls are constantly working against one another repelling each other like magnets with the same pole. She can also use this offensively though by focusing on spells that others cast she can break them. According to Vasilisa in Lost Crow Conspiracy Anna breaks spells by pulling magic into both souls at once and the souls pull the magic apart. This actually makes sense and Anna even describes pulling threads apart at various points in the books. It works with the magnet metaphor too. But then it turns out that Anna can cast spells as long as both souls are united in will. This might sound like a passable explanation for making the protagonist OP as fuck but it falls apart when you remember that Anna's other soul seems to have a mind of its own. She sees it as a shadowy figure in the dimension where the Pretheria are imprisoned and while it doesn't talk as far as I can tell it does move around and act on its own. So how is Anna controlling it? Does it really have a mind of its own or does it just seem that way? If Anna can control her other soul does that mean it can also control her? If she has two souls does that mean she can cast spells that are twice as large as a normal human? Not to mention that being completely unable to use magic in a world supposedly defined by magic is a huge handicap that could actually lead to some interesting characterization. We can't have that! If Anna was at a disadvantage and had to think her way out of situations that might make her somewhat likeable which means we have to do the exact opposite. Also, if Anna can pull magic into both her souls does that mean non-kimeric people can also suck spells into themselves? It seems like every lumenate would be able to break spells or maybe just absorb the energy and render them inert. And that's not even counting how magic would affect this world's economy. We see some spells that perform basic transformation of objects, the exact extent of which is not known but I know exactly what it would lead to. If common materials like rock or wood could be turned into something valuable like gold then every lumenator in the world would become rich as a king for about a week. Then the glut of gold would cause rapid inflation and it would become totally worthless. Then they'd move on to something like silver and make that worthless too. Then something else. Even if they couldn't actually transmute one material into another the same thing would happen since they could counterfeit money using illusions. Commodity currency would become completely useless overnight since it depends on the material it's made from being rare and difficult to counterfeit. After a while most countries would probably switch to some sort of fiat currency similar to what we have today. So essentially magic would push European banking systems forward several centuries. Of course that would still leave the issue of magical counterfeits that would need to be dealt with and the fact that rare materials would no longer be rare completely changes both politics and warfare. If there were clear limits on magic and how it works I wouldn't have to think about this sort of thing. So don't come to me saying James you're looking way too deep into this. Any setting would fall apart under this sort of scrutiny. Full metal alchemist had this exact problem and answered it by simply saying that the police keep a very close eye on alchemists to keep them from making precious metals. If a couple lines of hand waving can fix your problem then the problem is only there because you haven't properly thought things through. And beyond that there's the problem of the binding. The binding makes it so that only people granted permission by a lumenate circle can use magic and that no one can be too powerful. But most people in this world don't know that until partway through the story. There's a throwaway line in the first book about how lumenate circles don't have any power in the United States that the binding doesn't exist there. So how the hell did people not figure out that the circles were lying to them? Americans are a very loud and proud people. Trust me, I know. And they would not miss an opportunity to talk about how much better and forward thinking they were than those silly aristocratic Europeans. There's no way that people would be unaware of the fact that the circles were controlling who got magic and who didn't. Making it a plot twist just makes everyone in this world look like a dumbass. And besides, why is the binding limited by geography? If it's just a matter of the Americas being too far away for the spell to affect them, does that also mean that people in places like India and Japan are also unaffected by the binding? If other lands have more lumenators than Europe, then there's no way that European countries would have dominated the world the way they do in this series. Massive overseas colonies are really only possible when you have a huge military advantage over the people you're ruling. More than that, if someone was born in the Western Hemisphere and had the ability to use magic, would they still be able to use it if they traveled to Europe? Or would the binding prevent that? Or what if someone was born in Europe and emigrated? Would they gain magic when they docked at Ellis Island? I don't know, and that makes the entire system fall to pieces. This isn't pretentious nitpicking, guys. This is the bare minimum of what you need to establish in order to make a proper magic system. There's no mention of American praetharia either, even though the binding seems to have no power there. I feel like they'd not only be running around, but they'd be awful resentful of their brethren being imprisoned. Of course, it's possible that there simply are no praetharia in the Western Hemisphere for some reason, but the books should at least clarify that. And if the praetharia over there were imprisoned by the binding too, then the binding obviously has power there, and American luminators should be subject to the same restrictions as the European ones. They only did one interesting thing with this setting, and they couldn't even come close to doing it right. So enough about the aspects of this setting that don't make any sense. Now I want to talk about the other aspects of the setting, the ones that also don't make sense. Insert a joke about how every YA franchise revolves around some sort of rebellion here. Like I said before, there was a real revolution in 1848 that attempted to split Hungary off from the Austrian Empire. It's a little bit more complicated than that though, it always is. See, the revolution started in March 1848 when protesters took over Buda and Pest, which have since been combined into Budapest. They weren't hoping for independence at first, just some liberal reforms, like freedom of speech and an elected parliament. The protests didn't become a war for independence until the Bon of Croatia, whose name I won't even attempt to pronounce, invaded in an attempt to reassert Emperor Ferdinand's control over the region. You see, Croatia was part of Hungary at the time, and this guy actually wanted to sever the official ties to make Croatia an autonomous province within the Empire. However, this was interpreted as an act of rebellion by the Emperor and... look, it's complicated. But the war was basically caused by a combination of liberalism and ethnic nationalism. These are pretty common reasons for civil wars throughout history. People don't fight for vague notions of freedom, they usually have much more specific goals in mind. The liberal movement and the nationalist movement may have merged in the later part of the war, but these books treated as though they were one and the same and they weren't. Even if there was a lot of overlap between them, they were separate ideologies. But that's not the problem. It's weird, but not exactly an inconsistency. The problem is that whenever Anna talks about the revolution, she only describes it in terms of freedom from oppressors. Not only does that not make sense, but it's extremely hypocritical. Austria, which later became Austria-Hungary, was an incredibly diverse empire in terms of ethnic groups. Just look at this map here. It shows which ethnic group is the largest in each area, sometimes a majority and sometimes just a plurality. And it doesn't even count groups that were minorities everywhere they lived, like Roma and Jews. The two largest groups were Hungarians and Germans, but even combined they made up only about one-third of the empire's population. Now look at this map of Hungary from the same time period. It's quite a bit bigger than modern-day Hungary, and includes a lot of areas dominated by other ethnicities. And while many of them were probably open to the idea of equal rights and voting, a major part of the revolution was creating a country for Hungarians. If they land they lived in was suddenly part of a country created specifically for Hungarians, where did that leave them? Many of the other ethnic groups felt that if a new country was founded, they would find themselves as oppressed minorities. During the revolution, the majority of groups, like Croats, Ukrainians, and Romanians, supported the Austrian monarchy for that very reason. In Bloodrow's Rebellion, the conflict is treated as though it's just a matter of Hungarians wanting independence, and that completely leaves out the wishes of the majority of the region's population. It frames the Hungarians as innocents being oppressed, despite the story never showing any real signs of this. And this stands out even more when we see the plight of the Romani, they're forced to the fringes of society, and even have their magic stolen from them because of their race. At various points in the first two books, Anna meets revolutionaries from Croatia and Poland, who are also hoping for independence, and she expresses the hope that they succeed. She never actually does anything to help them, though. Even after hearing the Croatians' pleas for the new Hungarian government to grant them autonomy, the story still frames the Hungarians as noble freedom fighters. Now, the idea of drawing borders for countries along ethnic lines isn't a new idea, though it can easily drift into Charlottesville territory if you're not careful. But that's not the issue here. The issue is that Anna and the other Hungarian revolutionaries all want independence for themselves, but give very little thought to groups like the Roma, the Jews, the Serbs, and the dozen other races that made up the Empire at the time. They're perfectly happy to keep them under their boot as long as they gain power, and so the revolutionaries in this series are gigantic racist hypocrites. They were hypocrites and racist in real life, too, to be sure, but the important part is that the books refuse to acknowledge that fact. Now, I'm not saying that the reasons for the revolution need to be the exact same as they were IRL, or even that they need to fit into notions of modern morality. This is a work of fiction, after all. But I can't deny that it bothers me when a revolution that was nominally based on ideas of democracy and abolition of feudalism is simplified down to a vague notion of freedom granted by nationalism. And it bothers me even more when a bunch of bigoted imperialists are portrayed as some sort of egalitarian freedom fighters. This is sort of an inconsistency with the world building, but more than that, when you take a second to look at the minutiae of the conflict that this series is named after, the good guys seem a lot less good. Not that the bad guys are any better, to be clear, but beyond all that, there's something even worse about the setting that I haven't even touched on. This world is no fun. The whole appeal of the sci-fi and fantasy genres is that you can lose yourself in a whole new world and feel like you're an explorer discovering new and interesting things. Whether that world is a land of magic and dragons or a spacefaring empire, the fun comes from poking your head in and looking around. The Stormlight Archive has a great story and characters, but what initially attracted it to me was the idea of a planet where massive storms can tear apart cities and men can summon swords that cut through anything. The Wheel of Time has interesting politics and philosophy, but what makes it an epic story is the fact that the main characters are fighting an evil god and his endless hordes of half-animal minions. If you're a fan of this setting, tell me what about it is fun or awe-inspiring? I honestly can't think of a single example of something that could be considered wondrous in these books. At least, nothing that wasn't done 10 times better somewhere else. The fantasy genre contains mystery stories, political thrillers, action, and beautiful romance, but the reason I read fantasy instead of any of those genres is that we have all of that plus magic short swords that shoot out lightning. The World of Blood Rose Rebellion has no sense of wonder and no sense of otherness, and even in some bizarro world where the plot was half-decent, I could not forgive that sin. So that's it. Those are all the reasons that the setting for BRB sucks. This script is about 5,000 words long, but it needed to be because this is one of the most incoherent fictional worlds I have ever seen. The history is weird, the magic is inconsistent, lacking in depth, and the rebellion that's literally in the title makes the good guys look like a bunch of cunts. I said at the beginning of this video that this is the worst YA series ever written, and I stand by that. It's almost a microcosm of the issues I have with the genre as a whole, namely that nothing is ever thought through to its logical conclusion. But I've bitched enough for today. That's all I have to say about this setting. I'll have the review for the last book, Winter War Awakening, out as soon as I can. Hopefully that'll be the last I ever have to talk about this series. Be sure to subscribe, check out my Patreon, and smash that motherfucking like button. Yeah, that's right. I talk like that now. It's lit af. Catch ya later, fam.