 I would not have thought that they were for me. This is a feat or not a bug better than what you get at Harry Potter. The Simon Snow Books by Ray Morrell and also Fan Girl. Should you read them? Are they for you? I would not have thought that they were for me even though I was collecting them before I ever read them. And yes, I have quite a few additions here. These are not even all the additions that I will have. I have ordered some more additions and I thought about waiting until they arrived before filming this. But I was like, ah, you have more than one of every single book. So that's quite enough for a stack. So a little while ago, I filmed a video on the Raven Cycle that was, you know, should you read it? Is it for you, etc. And I thought I'd just make similar for this series partly because I do think that there's pretty good crossover. I think there's a decent likelihood that if you like the Raven Cycle, you'll like these books and vice versa. But also, I think because of the similarities, a similar type of discussion video is appropriate in terms of being helpful to you in deciding whether or not you should read these books. So what are the Simon Snowbooks? To explain what the Simon Snowbooks are, we have to start with fan girl. Now I don't mean to say that you have to start with fan girl in your reading, but to understand the Simon Snowbooks and what they are, you have to know about fan girl. When I expressed interest in reading carry on, I was told over and over again, you don't have to read fan girl. You don't have to read fan girl. And I was like, I have to read fan girl. You're like, okay, well then read fan girl. I don't want to read fan girl. That sounds terrible. Well, then don't read fan girl. Just read carry on. No, I have to read fan girl. So earlier this year, I finally did read fan girl and liked it so much that I acquired a nice other edition of it, which has cool illustrations in it, etc. But yeah, to everyone's surprise, most especially my own, I loved fan girl. I didn't just like it. I really loved it. I gave it five stars. Now I don't think when I gave it five stars, it wasn't because I thought this was a masterpiece that everyone should read, etc. Rather, I finished it and I enjoyed it so much that I just, I couldn't think of a reason to dock it any stars. So I was like, I guess that's five stars then. I said, I can't think of a reason not to give it five stars. Fan girl is a contemporary YA fiction book. I guess, I guess a romance. It has a romance in it, certainly. I don't read much contemporary or certainly don't read much YA contemporary and I really don't read YA contemporary romance. Which is why I was like, I don't want to read fan girl. But I did find the main character extremely charming and the premise charming and the humor really works for me. But again, you don't have to read fan girl to read YA. But in fan girl, what you learn is that the main character, Kath, the eponymous fan girl, she is anonymously the author of In Universe, the world's most popular, most celebrated, most followed fan fiction of a Harry Potter-esque story that exists in their universe called Simon's No. There are, in this universe, a series of books about a boy wizard who attends a magic school called Watford. And these books are equivalent in nature and in popularity as Harry Potter. And Kath has written a fan fiction called Carillon, which, again, for a real world parallel, is akin to when people have written Harry and Draco slash fiction, is what the vibe of that is. Is that the main character, Simon Snow, is your Harry Potter, and Carillon is a fan fiction in which Simon has a male-male romance with a villainous character from the Simon Snow books called Baz. And he's got kind of Draco-Malfoy-ish vibes. So there is no romance between those two characters in the Simon Snow books that exist in this universe. That romance exists in Kath's fan fiction called Carillon. The Simon Snow trilogy that Rainbow Rowell has written is not the Simon Snow books that exist in the universe of Fan Girl. It is the fan fiction that Kath wrote about the characters from the Simon Snow books that only exist in the universe of Fan Girl. Carillon is the first book. It can be read as a standalone. I don't know this for a fact, but reading it, I would suspect that it was originally intended to be a standalone, to simply be a companion novel that hears Fan Girl, and then she talks on and on and on about this fan fiction. So, okay, well then here's the fan fiction to go with it. But there is an entire trilogy, but when you read this, it ends pretty conclusively and it feels, again, like it was intended to be a standalone companion to go with Fan Girl by itself. These look like the same copy. They are not. This is the original hardcover of Carillon, which did not have this aesthetic at all. And in a promotion, they were giving away dust jackets so that the Carillon hardcover would match what later became the aesthetic of the books. So this is the original hardcover of Carillon with a promotional dust jacket on it, but it's a different book on the inside with a different map, different art, et cetera. But then they did release a hardcover to match the now aesthetic of these books. So this book comes with this cover now, comes with this dust jacket. The book itself is different. The color of the book is different. And I have both. So, ta-da! The Carillon, as I say, it reads like a fan fiction of an existing IP, but an excellent fan fiction. But that's what it reads like. So it doesn't really talk that much about the world building. It doesn't do a lot of setup, as you would expect from a first book in a series of books that are about new characters in a wizarding school, et cetera. Fan fiction is able to kind of just dive in and not explain things because fan fiction presumes you already know what this universe is, who these characters are, and you're just here to see some what-if scenarios between these characters or characters from other universes colliding. So that doesn't have to set things up very much. So, when you start Carillon, it doesn't really introduce the characters. It doesn't really start with, you know, young boy doesn't know he's a wizard, finds out he's a wizard, then discovers the school and makes friends. We've skipped past all of that. He's already been at the school for a while. He already has friends at the school. He already has an existing rivalry with the character of Baz. And there's, you know, a little bit done. It's not completely absent, but there's not much done to set that up because it reads like fan fiction. It assumes you know these things, and you do know these things if you read Fan Girl. Or if you have been told about Fan Girl, as I am telling you now. You know that Simon Snow is the main character of these books. You know that Baz is the sort of baddie rival Draco character from those books. So when you read Carillon, you're like, ah-ha, here we go, I know what we're doing. And furthermore, because it's so directly inspired by Harry Potter, then a lot of gaps can be filled in by assumptions like, okay, wizarding school, it's like Harry Potter. Okay, they attend magic classes, it's like Harry Potter. There are non-magic folks, okay, those are muggles. Like you can just insert, fill in gap the way you would if you were to Harry Potter fan fiction. But the central driving force of this book or these books is similarly to in a fan fiction, it is the relationship between Simon and Baz, which is the what ifs that this fan fiction is positing. Is what if these two characters that already exist in a book that has like a full-on story about magic and defeating evil, what if those characters had a relationship? What if that happened? So that's what this is about. And then again, I don't know for a fact that there was never planned to be any more books, but it certainly feels like this was a standalone companion, but it was so popular that we got two more books. I know I'm holding up four. The regular and Barnes and Noble editions of the second book, Wayward's Son, which feels extremely like a middle book. At this point, you're like, okay, so you planned more. This is ending quite open-endedly. And then the last book where again, I have the regular edition and the Barnes and Noble edition of Any Way the Wind Blows, which feels like a finale that is conclusive, although I would not object to, and I would not be surprised if there would be more books written because this is so popular. What these books are not are an independent new invention with a completely unique world and a completely unique idea for a fantasy story. They are not that. They even, the stated purpose of them is to be a fan fiction of a supposedly existing IP, but that IP doesn't actually exist, which is kind of a strange limbo for it to be, and which is why I think it deserves or it necessitates some background knowledge and explanation, you do not have to read all a fan girl to get that information. You just got that information from me right now in a few sentences in a few minutes because fan girl is about her own life and her starting university and her personal relationships and the fan fiction is significant to the story and her relationship to being a writer of fan fiction, how that affects her life, but what you need to know in order to carry on, I've just told you. So why do I love carry on and why might you love it? I, if you follow my channel, I tend to read adult fantasy in particular. I tend to lean towards the more grim dark. I don't like fluffy books whenever something is pitched as this is a book that'll make you happy. This is a book that's sweet. This is a book that's just like fluffy and romantic. I'm like, ill, no, get it away from me. That's the last thing I want. Many people, including myself, were surprised that I would be interested in carry on and then like carry on and not just like carry on, but love carry on. Guy got in merch for carry on, ordered every edition of carry on and the other Simon Snow books. These books, I think, I often talk about books being intentional and being actively choosing to do something which is, I've discovered a big deal with me. I wouldn't have thought so. I wouldn't have thought to identify that as a thing with me, but it is. So I've talked before about historical fiction where it messes with history and it changes a bunch of historical things and how that will irritate me unless it feels like the author is fully aware that this is not how history was and has actively chosen to change that, to replace that, to subvert that, that there is an active conscious choice on the part of the author to do that thing. I also, I love the show Riverdale, which like people's, it's one of the people's favorite shows to deride, which is just so much fun for me. But Riverdale is a show that is extremely self-aware and intentional about what it's doing. When people say that, oh, the characters speak in like completely unnatural ways in Riverdale, I'm like, yeah, I know, they know. The writers know, the actors know. This is a feat or not a bug. Like you haven't like spotted a problem. This is part of the project of it, is this like hyper saturated, hyper ultra not realistic kind of thing that they're doing. Like they are not going for realism. So criticizing it based on its lack of realism is just a complete misunderstanding of its project. When you know, I feel like if you learn or know that I like Riverdale, it's less surprising than I like, carry on. But similarly, carry on, it knows what it is. It's not trying to be something different than that. And it knocks it out of the park on being what it is. So when you read it and you know that it's meant to be this fan fiction from this other book, it reads like it, but it reads like the absolute best version of that. It doesn't read like a book or she tried to start her own unique story with her own unique idea for magic, her own unique idea for et cetera. And it wasn't trying to. It's not that she was trying to do that and failed at it. That was not the project of these books. And yet for being, you know, this sort of, I guess you could say flimsy premise, this sort of copycat, copy paste fan fiction of a non-existing thing from another thing. Like that's a pretty nebulous weird limbo zone for it to occupy. But despite that, I think it excels at actually creating a decently unique world that does feel distinct and different from the world of Harry Potter. It does not feel legitimately like copy paste. You can tell that it's like, you know, when you watch Galaxy Quest, this is a send up of Star Trek and yet it has its own unique characters, its own unique kind of setup, its own unique thing that it's doing unto itself that is distinct from Star Trek. So carry on, like Simon Snow, he's not a one-to-one with Harry Potter. He has like the type of situation he's in, the archetypal character that that is in the way that he is a magic user who was raised by non-magic users in squalor and poverty and was discovered and then got to go to a wizarding school where he made friends and it's a found family. Like, okay, that situation, yes, that is Harry Potter. But Simon Snow isn't really nothing like Harry Potter as a character. Similarly, Baz, the love interest in this fan fiction of Simon Snow, he's sort of snooty. He comes from a rich, old wizarding magic family. He kind of looks down on other people in school. He dresses very in very expensive clothing. He's very kind of sarcastic and can be kind of cruel. He's definitely, it is alluded to all of the times that he has done things to cause problems for Simon Snow. So you're like, yes, this is a Draco-Malfoy type of character, obviously. And yet Baz is nothing like Draco-Malfoy in terms of who he is as a person and his actual relationship with Simon Snow, who is nothing like Harry Potter. They have a female friend. She's clearly a Hermione type, again. She's a pretty book smart and she sort of functions in the friendship a little similarly to Hermione where she'll show up with the information, with the knowledge they need to solve the problem, this sort of thing. But she herself is extremely different from Hermione. And the way that magic works is, I really, really love the way magic works in Karrion because unlike very serious books, very serious magic systems, where I'm gonna be poking holes in it and saying this doesn't make sense, this falls apart. This is a fluffy, fun Riverdale-esque adventure where I don't expect it to function. But actually, the way that the magic is explained in Karrion makes more sense than the way that magic is explained in Harry Potter. She has written in, for example, a reason for why, they're not called muggles, but why muggles cannot know about the world of magic, why that information must be kept from them. In Harry Potter, we get some explanation about how, oh, well, then they would just want all of their problems solved by magic if they knew about it or something like that, which is kind of like, huh, there's a pretty good reason. It's not, you know, like, when I say a good reason, it's not like, well, that's a perfect reason. That's a great explanation. This is an ironclad magic system, no. But it's actually like a pretty solid reason that makes more sense than anything in Harry Potter. Or at least there is a reason, I should say, for why that information, that knowledge, that awareness must be kept from non-magic users. And the way that spells work, the way that the saying of them works and what words result in magic makes more sense in these books that it does in Harry Potter and is also kind of a humorous thing, the way that it's worked in, the way that it functions, is a little more on the tongue and cheek side. And yet it does still make more sense. And I feel like the way that these sort of lessons learned and the way that the comeuppance of the villain, like that whole thing, I think there's actually a better sort of thematic message as a result of how that is all resolved, how that, what is the situation between the hero and the villain, how this conflict, what is the conflict that must be resolved and how it is resolved, is thematically better than what you get in Harry Potter, in my opinion. But the thing that we're all here for, presumably when you read Simon Snow books, which are a fan fiction, which are a romance-centric fan fiction as fan fiction tends to be by its nature, Baz and Simon. I am not a romance reader and I definitely am on record as saying I really don't like enemies to lovers. I don't like hate to love. Most of the time I'm of the opinion that like, if you dislike somebody that strongly on your first impression, I don't think you could be that wrong about it. Like a mild dislike to love because there was a misunderstanding about, you know, sort of like what you get in Pride and Prejudice where it's like, it's misinformation that made you think, oh, this person did this thing that I am poor. Like, I mean, having learned that about them, I can't condone that. And then learning that that's false. That's different from like meeting somebody and immediately just like hating them. And then falling in love, like I just, that does not work for me. I know a lot of people love it, but I don't like it. So for this to be like a hairy Draco, you know, kind of enemies to lovers type of situation, that sounds extremely unlikely to be satisfying to me. But I think this is the rare example of it done in a way that I absolutely, I love it. And I think that the reasons for why there would be this sort of hate or misunderstanding to begin with works pretty well, makes a lot of sense, especially because they are young and because of the magic and things like that and their family backgrounds, the situations that they've each been kind of forced into, it works for me. And their relationship, once there is a relationship when they've gotten over the hate part and they are in the love part, I love them together. I, they have such great chemistry in my opinion. They are distinct and interesting and amusing individuals. I enjoy reading about all these characters and I enjoy reading about the stuff they get up to and the conversations they have that are not romantic in nature. I've read some romance books, not by choice. And a lot of the time, my problem will be like, okay, they claim to love each other as people. There's a lot of lip service paid to that. But the only thing they ever do is bang and the only thing they ever talk about is wanting to bang. And I'm like, I mean, I guess I believe you that you have something else between you but it's not really happened in the book. Whereas when you read the Simon Snow books, you get a sense for who Simon is as a person, who Baz is as a person, who they are to their friends, who they are to the magic world at large, who they are to each other other than just lovers. And they, I like them as people and I like them as friends together in outside of any kind of like romantic physical relationship. I like that in addition to it. It's not like it's purely just a physical, lustful kind of relationship. There's so much more to it. And there's so much more to them as characters. And lastly, the humor. The humor really, really works for me in these books which I think can kind of make or break it. That's what made fan girl work for me because again, I don't really like contemporary, contemporary romance, contemporary YA romance but I Ray Morale's humor really works for me. And it's really, really excellent in the Simon Snow books. In fact, I messaged Hillary who has not read any of these books and I would not even recommend them to her honestly. This is not a situation again where I'm saying these are great books and everyone should read them because everyone would like them. I don't think that's true. I think a lot of people would like them and I think more people would like them. I think there are people out there that don't think that they would like them but that would because they're like me, you know, who even if you are the type of person that's like, I only like grim dark adult fantasy, I would tend to say things like that but it's possible you could like this too. You know, don't knock it till you try it. But anyway, like I was saying, the humor and it really works for me and even though I would not say, Hillary, you gotta read these books, I wasn't trying to convince her to read them. There were a lot of passages, a lot of like amusing moments, a lot of fun quips that even out of context, I could share and she found extremely amusing. So the humor in it, again, humor is a very, you know, your mileage may vary, your taste may vary, like humor is a very like taste specific type thing. You know, people, everyone can agree that you know, someone dying in a book is a sad thing to have happen but whether or not something's funny is very much like in the eye of the beholder. I personally find the snark in these books to be the right amount and the right kind for me to find amusing. I've read a lot of white books where I complained that, oh, it's just nothing but snark, nothing is taken seriously and every single character is the same kind of snarky and you can't tell them apart and I hate that. Here they are distinct personalities with their own distinct kind of ways of saying things that can be amusing in their own ways but they have distinct voices and the humor, there's a lot of it in the very nature of these books is kind of humorous, their very existences but there are quite serious poignant moments that are not then undermined by a joke, that are not turned into a joke, that are not ruined by some snarky banter because God forbid there's a page that doesn't have snark on it. It allows itself to have some more serious heartfelt moments which is what makes it work. Even Galaxy Quest has that which is why that movie is so good. Now if you are thinking about reading these books obviously you can physically read them but the audiobooks, if that's something that you're into are really, really good. The narrator is really good at doing different voices for the different characters with in particular with humorous books, it's important that an audiobook narrator have good comedic timing in delivering humorous lines and I believe that the audiobook narrator for these books does have good comedic timing. So yeah, I would recommend them. If any of what I've described to you sounds pretty good then I would say give them a go. You don't have to read Fan Girl but I did not want to and ended up really liking it so maybe give it a go but if it's carry on that you're interested in go right to carry on. You have the information now that you need in order to understand the project of it and to be set up to enjoy it. So let me know your thoughts and feelings about these books if you've read them, if you're thinking about reading them, if you have no interest in reading them. I'll leave a link down below to where I bought this. I think it's Rainbow Rowell's own Merch Shop. She's got some other cool merch there. So I'm tempted by a few other things but this is the one that I got. But yeah, whatever you want to let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times as well but definitely Saturdays so like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you.