 the real grimdark is the truths you learned about yourself along the way. So I guess I was taking this rather personally, but I don't even have the book. I'm gonna talk about Wisdom of Crowds. Hey guys it's Leigh Ann and I'm here today to talk about the Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Bercromby. So this is a terrible time to be filming this, but I finished it last night or technically this morning at like 1 a.m. so I just just like the trouble with these. I just have to talk about it immediately. However I got like no sleep. My neighbors are currently decided to start playing really loud music so I really hope you can't hear that. My cat scratched my face today so I covered that up with makeup and I'm leaving town tomorrow so like I really need to be packing right now. But instead I'm gonna talk about Wisdom of Crowds. Oh and also my cat is meowing at me right now because I locked her in the bedroom so that she wouldn't fuck with all this. So I hope you can't hear the music or the cat or the traffic or any of the other things we're just gonna power on through okay. So I'm gonna do a non-spoiler review for the most part and then I do want to talk about spoilers and unlike Trouble with Peace when I do two separate reviews I'm just gonna do spoilers at the end of this so I'll give you lots of warning when I'm gonna talk about spoilers. So anyway yeah great okay let's do this. So the Wisdom of Crowds is the third and final book in the Age of Madness trilogy and also the final book for now in the world of the First Law and I if you've been watching my channel at all in the last you know honestly in the last week probably but this year I've been rereading all of the First Law books and I've said it so many times in all my videos been like and I'm reading this because I'm reading all of the First Law books in anticipation the release of the third and final book of the Age of Madness trilogy the Wisdom of Crowds and here we are the Wisdom of Crowds I don't even have the book because most of my pre-orders are coming from the UK so it's gonna be a minute before they arrive and I didn't put Wisdom of Crowds on my TBR in September because I was like no I'll read it in October because I'm reading Trouble with Peace in September and I did read Trouble with Peace I did do that and then I woke up on Tuesday and my phone the first thing it told me was that my audible pre-order of Wisdom of Crowds was ready to go and I was like great listen so uh no zero self-control and uh I was I was a little anxious after spending so long anticipating this book and putting kind of a great amount of pressure on it like would it live up because a little hatred dethroned my former favorite book and then Trouble with Peace dethroned a little hatred I was like well Wisdom of Crowds are you gonna dethrone and yes yes it did I cried I have never cried reading a never can't be a book at all not even teared up not even a little bit and I was ugly crying last night um and we'll get into why in the spoiler section if you stick around for that was it good it was good and it just it cannot be the last first law book it just absolutely cannot both because I need more but also because there's so many seeds planted for what could come in future stories in future books new things for uh him to explore uh new areas of the map for him to explore and uh I really hope he does which I mean even if it had wrapped up neatly in a bow I would have been like great well just pick another part of the map and just start telling a story over there I don't care but if there's definitely seeds planted I'm he's gonna write more okay but so it's okay it's really hard to do no spoilers for the third book in a trilogy and the final book in like an ongoing saga but okay we're gonna do our best a little hatred and the trouble with peace set up a world that was uh going through an industrial revolution and with that also comes uh populism so the first two books were sort of following a painfully familiar trajectory both for anyone that studied history and anyone that's living nowadays in our current world it's this trilogy has just been an extremely relevant and home-hitting one uh even more so than first law books have been in the past and first law books in my opinion have always been kind of uh painfully realistic and it's been one of the most honestly cathartic things about reading first law books is uh is seeing how cynical and corrupt and how futile and how uh just you know bad people doing bad things but not for you know massage twirling reasons but because because of little things because of little evils because of greeds and ambitions because of petty rivalries and jealousies and how despite the best efforts of good people and there's massive asterisks to anybody that is a good person because and you read an abracame book and you begin to lose faith in the idea of such a thing existing not because everyone in his books is evil just because what even is a good person like even if you present a good facade to the outside world if this is somebody that other people would say oh he's a good guy i mean we when you crack open the hood and you look beneath and what's ticking it isn't necessarily uh benevolence and selflessness and all these greater morals and virtues a lot of times there is there are selfish reasons there are ambitions there is greed there are other things beneath the surface that color what you've been seeing on the exterior as something incredibly virtuous few things are what they seem so good guys aren't necessarily that good and bad guys aren't necessarily that bad and everyone's just a big dark gray mess anyway we've brought an already relevant writing style and world into an industrial and populist age in this trilogy which has just been chef's kiss because i haven't seen a lot of fantasy series do that it is so painfully relevant for the times and then the master character builder that is joeb or crombie has somehow gotten better he's improved upon perfection so that's a neat trick and and he got me to cry he got me to cry that's the one thing he hadn't achieved yet he's getting me to cry and okay we've done it now so what else can i say without spoilers is it a satisfying conclusion i would say so uh the seeds that are planted throughout the trilogy and throughout the series in general there's just a lot of as i've mentioned before characters from previous books who pop in and out uh who do they aren't the main characters anymore in this new trilogy which is great but unlike the new star wars movies where they take the characters from the beloved characters from the original trilogy and shove them in and then do them such a disservice and completely assassinate their characters uh no this new trilogy uh when it does incorporate familiar characters it does it sparingly it does it only when the plot really needs it to and it's never destroying what you once knew about this character or once thought about this character i mean it helps that none of the characters were like great heroes like luke or you'd be like he was such a hero and you've ruined him i mean this is the first law so i guess it would be the only kind of character south stations if they turned into dudley do right all of a sudden and you'd be like what anyway everybody everybody who's a new character everyone who's an old character everyone who's a character in the first law in this new trilogy has just been incredible to observe to follow to to get to know to try to unpack to try to guess it what they're about because obviously you're in their hands but you only know so much you only know what lord grim dark has chosen to share with you so you you're still guessing at their motivations and what they might do next and they they do surprise you sometimes and that's what i love about it as well is that sometimes you can predict what they're gonna do and that's not a bad thing because if it's well written that means you've come to know this world and you've come to know these characters and an intelligent person can begin to make educated guesses and it's not poorly written if the reader is able to guess what's coming a lesson that the showrunners of game of thrones never learned if you plant seeds for something to happen and people start noticing that that's that means you've planted the correct seeds so there are there are things in this like final book um that i did i can't say i predicted anything like precisely which i think is unreasonable but there are things that i was starting to get a sense that might be kind of where this is going or might be what a character might do might be what a character is trying to accomplish or where their heads at and for a few things i was correct and but it wasn't like oh well i saw that coming it was very satisfying nevertheless because i didn't know exactly how that would come about and the way that it came about felt earned the payoff was there it felt true to what we had been told but we had come to know um and and even again so even though i guessed some piece of it or kind of the overarching thing that would happen or the direction something would go i never guessed exactly how that would go down exactly who might be involved exactly what would be said and how that would be accomplished and and i might guess that somebody is attempting to accomplish something but i can't guess if they're going to be successful at that so it was just a very rewarding third book because again questions that you had were being answered and sometimes it was something that you were like oh yeah i called it and hopefully or it came out of nowhere but not again not in a bad way uh there were still surprises there were things you're like oh i didn't see that coming so it was just it was great it was it was perfect it was amazing and it was even more i don't know not maybe more relevant but i guess each book in this trilogy has sort of driven the knife in deeper with how relevant it feels and how how painful that dark mirror is when it's held up for us to see our own selves in our own society and our own worst tendencies play out in grim dark glory you're like oh yeah oh this feels a little too familiar oof all i can say is if this whole year of me rereading the books and heaping praise on them and then anticipating this book so much and despite the amount of pressure that i put on it to be great it still lived up to my expectations and did not disappoint me uh because i could not have possibly hyped it more to myself than i did a little like the day after christmas when you're five years old i mean it's over now i've been waiting for this all year and it's over now i have no first law book to mark as bunch to read on goodreads i have no first law book to be refreshing every fancy booksellers website waiting for the special edition signed edition to be available for pre-order there's just nothing my life is meaningless now i always feel like inigo montoya in princess by he spent so long plotting his revenge that he doesn't really know what to do with the rest of his life he spent so long anticipating the wisdom of crowds i don't know what to do with the rest of my life yeah i honestly don't think i can say anything else without spoilers because we're just so far down the road now that um yeah i can't say anything that wouldn't be spoilery for some piece of this so if you haven't read wisdom of crowds if you haven't read the age of madness if you haven't read anything in the first plot what are you doing but so i think without further ado i do need to dive into spoilers before i burst so if you have not read them just click away now and go pick up whichever book you left off at uh and just get caught up okay spoilers so i mean the reason that i was ugly crying last night i think if you've read the wisdom of crowds which i sure hope you have if you're still sticking around for this part of the video uh is because of orso and as i was explaining this to like the few people that messaged me about how oh did you write something super sad or whatever and he did write something super sad like the fact of or so dying i that's that's sad but i don't know that that would make me cry necessarily like the fact of that um it was the way that scene was written and even now every time i think about that scene it's the way that it's written that absolutely kills me i mentioned my trouble trouble with peace reviews that orso is the character that i most identified with personally saw myself in him so i guess i was taking this rather personally but i i mean i don't disagree with the i mean i kept thinking to myself as the plot was going down the road that it was going i was like there's just there's just no way like that he survives and i wasn't so much thinking about life and death as just like he has no place in this scheme he is not useful to anyone he isn't gonna be a player there's there's no there's no play here so at best he runs away and lives in obscurity but yeah as as these different plots and plans and schemes were coming to fruition and and meeting their natural end i was just there's no place on this board anymore for orso and i was like so where are we gonna find a place for him are we gonna find a place for him we're not gonna find a place for him like i couldn't say that i was surprised that that he that he died and it couldn't say that i was unprepared for it because i was sitting there going is is he gonna die there were several times that i thought that we would that he might die and so when we finally came down to it it's not like i was unprepared it's not like i didn't think the story was gonna naturally go there and it's not like i haven't seen first law characters die characters that i really like um but the way that i've seen is written where he's still being it despite everything he's he's putting a i don't want to see a brave face because it's not a brave face but he's putting a cheery face on it uh it was it's kind of uh in key it reminds me it reminds me of oscar wild um i don't know if this is actually true but i've heard this many times and i like to think that it's true that his last words were either this wallpaper goes or i do but that was kind of like the vibe of orso uh facing the gallows just sort of making the last few cracks and jokes while he still could jokes at his own expense jokes at the expense of his own imminent demise and just that the way that that was written like if he had if he had gone to the gallows nobly with you know stiff upper lip what what it would have been it would have been hard to read that but it was it was the you know you're either laughing or you're crying kind of which again this is why i see myself in orso like i do not want to say that oh i too would face the gallows with a smirk and a twinkle in my eye and i would mean i mean i would probably be screaming and running away but i have been known to say you're either laughing or you're crying a lot in my life and that was his entire vibe in that scene and then because i mean well when he dies his pov has to end but because it was being told from his perspective then we didn't really have eyes on him actually dying and so innocent sweet little me was like maybe he's faking us out again maybe it's a trick again maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe we're gonna go through these other povs and suddenly find out that he's actually alive and that there was a last minute trick there was the last minute pull of the punch but but no it was like a second dagger to the heart when savine was like you hung my brother or you hanged my brother and i was like oh no he's really dead but even then i didn't really cry i didn't cry and i didn't full on cry until the book was over because i just kept holding out hope that someway somehow he's not dead even though i knew he definitely was but until i read the last page there was still hope and then then i finished the book and then i just thought about him smiling as he faced the gallows and i was like so yeah i was i was a mess um so yeah that's that those are the big feelings but so other spoilers less i don't want to say less impactful spoilers but that's the thing that made me cry but so the so the other stuff i already said in trouble with these that you know you could and i'm sure i'm not the only one that observed how leo was sort of going down the path of glockton and i thought that by the end of wisdom of crowds i would really like leo if he sort of fully transformed into the crippled butterfly that is sent in glockton and uh yeah he turned out to be a real dick he at first you know it was fun to see him get smarter and him get more uh wily and ambitious and and by the end you know you really when savina's like yeah no i you are what i made you you're kind of my creature i taught you to be this way and i remember wishing you'd be more this way but well i don't wish that anymore i kind of miss when you were dumb and pretty because the scheming version of you it's just it's not same as glockton because there's your hotheadedness and your your self aggrandizing tendencies are still there somehow against all odds he's so so stubborn and a lot of his worst kind of sexist ideas and and this weird kind of power-hungryness that doesn't even come from i guess it's ambition but it's not i don't even know what to call it i mean it is authentic to the way certain people are because evercraft me writes characters amazingly well so he's definitely feels like a fully fleshed out authentic character and you understand what's going on there it's just i don't know you really don't like it you're you're not fun you're kind of awful you're so awful i wish someone would kill you versus every basically everybody else in the series good or evil i would say i i liked you i mean and liking them is is always a a word with multiple asterisks and abercrombie book but they were people that i guess i enjoyed that even when they were being awful i was just like oh that's awful but with leo by the end i was like i really fucking hate you dude can you please go jump off a cliff do us all a favor versus i mean savine certainly makes mistakes um she kind of has to eat a lot of crow but the way that she has to sort of face adversity in new ways and kind of face up to what her preconceptions were about how the world works about how who she is in the world about what she is capable of about what her values are i mean she doesn't turn into mother teresa but she does kind of have to realign her values which is feels very authentic to what she's gone through when she learns that okay and this is i when we had the prophecy from rica i pretty much called um that the owl would be rica as soon as we had the situation with her long eye i was like well the owl would be rica i was like maybe possibly the owl is bias because bias has eyes on everything maybe but i think it's rica um so i was correct at least as far as or at least rica agrees with me she thinks that the owl is her but so i also then thought to myself that the weaver even though we were told it was pike part of me thought that either bias is behind this um even though it seems to be going against bias because they're going against valentine bulk um you know maybe he's seen bias has finally seen that valentine bulk has outlived its usefulness and it's time to burn it down and start fresh which is possible i was like or it's glockta and i was i've definitely favored it being glockta i preferred that outcome and i didn't think it at all uh improbable that it could be glockta especially how close he was with pike and how much he hates bias and how he just kind of so quickly just sort of melted away into the shadows and was like here pike can be in charge now it's like okay if you're either behind this or you are up to something so he was behind this and what i didn't see coming a lot of people i think predicted that zuri was an eater and i didn't think it unlikely that zuri was an eater what i didn't suspect was that glockta knew she was an eater and purposely put her with his daughter to be protection against your sulfur like i was like wow that is some 40 chests my god but a lot of these things again like it was satisfying to see them pay off because there's enough seeds planted you were like i have some idea about where this could go and so like if we came out of nowhere and we said that all along it was clover that was behind everything you'd be like uh well i didn't see that coming because that makes no fucking sense from the broken no speaking of clover clover is like my new favorite character i loved him from a little hatred and i continued to look him more and more so i am delighted that the end of this book kind of puts clover in the spotlight where he could easily be the focal point of a new of a new trilogy a new series or even a standalone i'm very excited to see more of clover clover if i was crying over or so i was laughing over clover a great deal he had some of the greatest one-liners some of the best witnesses and he was just such a such an amusing energy to have around greatly appreciated clover and something kind of told me that he's like he's got that cockroach energy where he's he's gonna survive he's gonna make it nothing can kill that guy probably should but he's sort of sort of like casca in that way where he's very amusing isn't a lot of dangerous situations but never puts himself in danger at least as little as possible clover is fantastic and i never ever get tired of seeing shivers just shivers but also i never get tired of seeing shivers with rika at a certain fail that little family unit if we can call it a family unit and i'm gonna call it a family unit it's so precious i mean they're horrible and violent and blood thirsty and etc but it's just so so sweet uncle shivers and tricky rika and good old if there was anybody that i wanted to like hang out with like for real because i mean usually when there's like questions you know on booktube or the internet that are like if you could live in your favorite fantasy world which would it be and i'm like my favorite fantasy worlds are like grim dark worlds and no i don't want to be in the world of the first law i basically rdm except with smartphones and if i have to face this world i would rather do it with a smartphone thank you very much so i've never really wanted to be able to transport myself into the world of the first law because uh i'm not that much of a masochist but i wouldn't mind hanging out for a day with shivers is sir and then rika because they're they're fun i was delighted delighted delighted to see stour get killed because it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy geez that guy i was almost worried that he wouldn't i was worried that that rika would decide to be the better person and i was like fucking kill him and she did and it was glorious what else what else what else i was um i guess a little disappointed in gunner broad just because i don't know the way he got swept up in this populous uprising it's not unbelievable that he would given his past but given also everything that he had that that savine had done for him and for his family i i kept waiting for him to be in on some kind of plan to save savine and it was very disappointing to me that he was just full on he had drunk the kool-aid and was down to kill savine and i was like really dude really but uh it's i mean it is realistic so it's it's not like i can say that that is out of character for him i was just i was like man sir i'm very disappointed in you and then i mean glaucus and bias the uh as savine puts it the fact that glaucus wanted to defeat bias and in doing so became bias and i mean she's not wrong but at the same time i couldn't help feeling like you don't get it savine this wasn't necessary because i mean wasn't necessary i don't know is our things better now i don't know and the fact that you know basically a glaucus plan would include getting rid of orso as well my heart was a little too bruised to be okay with that i was like glaucus you are my favorite character and you are really really testing me right now with this plan that involves offing or so i mean and also i'm jumping around all over the place if that did not become clear only abacame could write um a book in which i am shipping the incest couple even after we i mean we knew they were incestuous all along even before they knew if we i mean if you had read the books in publication order which is what i recommend and i'm very disappointed in anyone that ignores publication order but i mean from the get go you know they're rather incest or even when they don't know it and so i mean part of you was like well they don't know it so i guess it's fine well incest isn't great like they don't know so i mean if they never know i mean it's fine so i was almost mad when already told savi and i wanted to be like well so what if their brother and sister these are royals like they do that shit all the time just whatever let her let her marry him you've lied this long once the worst thing can happen their kids will be a little funny like whatever so then even after they learned about it and even when they were still kind of like i that's my brother that's my sister but also like i'm still into them i want to be like okay we'll go beat together it's fine it's fine he had me questioning my morals in the first law trilogy when i was on the side of the torturer and now i'm questioning my morals because i'm on the side of pro incest the real grim dark is the truths you learned about yourself along the way but i don't i mean i just okay and so the end where we get this incredible vision from rica now we have these seeds planted where clover is with bias and is going to be training the next generation and i mean you know that things are not gonna go well and the agree on savi and leo who are ripe for civil war like on day one so this does i mean i guess this just doesn't feel it is a satisfying conclusion of this trilogy however it doesn't feel like a conclusion to the first law it because there's so many seeds planted for what could come next and i kept thinking that too when i was reading it i was like this is really all gonna wrap up by the end and i mean it does like the main things that are going on in this trilogy are wrapped up but there's just so much so much more to come i hope there's another trilogy but i'll take stand alone i'll take whatever but there's gotta be more because you can't just dangle all that stuff it was it was practically like a marvel post credits scene there was like here's an elaborate vision and here's bias plotting again already and you're like okay so when is the next installment coming our way you think i'm done i think i've run out of things to gush or complain or wax poetic amount so let me know in the comments down below what you thought of wisdom of crowds because if you are in this part of the video then you have read wisdom of crowds and if you are in this part of the video and you have not read wisdom of crowds shame on you whatever you want to let me know i have those videos on saturdays other random times as well but i think saturdays so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you bye so i just finished the wisdom of crowds and um i'm gonna film i think my review it's tomorrow i was originally not gonna do i'm not gonna film views immediately after um because i'm yeah but i think i'm gonna um but i just wanted to capture i mean i'm gonna film a spoiler review so i just wanted to capture my immediate reaction after reading it um i have never cried reading an apricot me book and we didn't go from no crying to like a gentle glistening tear i am like full on ugly crying oh my god while i was reading it i wasn't crying i mean i turned up a little um but i would didn't cry because i kept i kept believing that there was just some way that it wasn't what it seemed there's gonna be a it's a it's it's gonna be a switcheroo he's faking us out um but nope he really did and um um if you watched my spoiler review or my non-spoiler review i forget where i said it in one of my two reviews for the trouble with peace i mentioned that the character that i most identified with in the new series and probably in all of the first law is um or so so um yep this is rough um it was so good though um so yeah um five out of five stars um probably my favorite apricot me book now except also like how much of a f***ing masochist do you have to be to make your favorite one the one that makes you ugly cry um but i was not expecting to ugly cry reading an apricot me book i've read and reread all of his books the original trilogy the standalone's sharp ends and now the new trilogy never cried did not expect going into wisdom of crowds that i would cry like i would joke that i'm gonna cry because there's no more first law books but and i mean that is upsetting especially the way this ended um he has to be writing more first law books the way it ends um but it's been emotional