 I don't get it. Is the tiger alive or not? James, we need to talk. Huh? What? I just read the book written by the Kardashians and it's... I need to complain about it to somebody. I didn't know the Kardashians wrote a book that seems kinda weird. Yeah, it's called Rebels City of Indra, a title so bad I have to ADR my lines. Rebels City of Indra? Wait. That doesn't make any sense. It's like they took two different titles and smashed them together in a way that doesn't make sense for either one. Like, you could call it Rebels and that would be generic and stupid, but it would make sense. Or you could call it City of Indra and it would be the same story. Or you could say Rebels of Indra or Rebels of the City of Indra. And none of these would be great titles, but they would at least make sense. Rebels City of Indra is just taking two different subjects and smashing them together. Yeah, I know. And if the title is stupid, that doesn't bode well for the rest of the book. But I mean, I kind of imagine that considering that it's... Well, I assume it's a celebrity vanity project. Well, if I'm being honest, it's not actually that horrendous. It's just... nothing. You know, there's nothing here. There's no emotion in it. It feels like a standard dystopian young adult novel that was written by a machine. There's no emotion in here at all. Like, there's events that happen in the plot. But while reading, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be mad about it or happy or upset. And the characters are kind of the same. Like, things happen and they do things, but I don't know how they're supposed to be feeling, so I don't know why they're doing things. So what you're saying is that the prose is just irredeemably bad. Well, bad prose is only part of the problem. Like, yes, it is a pretty big part, but it's not the only part. Like, see, this book does have a setting. It's not super original or super well-defined, but it's there. And it does have characters who are, again, not super original or super well-defined, but they're there. You know, they exist, and the plot does also exist. But there's just... there's no conflict, I suppose. There's no villain who's trying to do things and the heroes are trying to stop them. And there's no force or anything that is trying to prevent the heroes from reaching their goals. And for that matter, I'm not even sure what the heroes' goals are until the last, like, 50 pages. But even then, I'm still very confused about what exactly they're doing and why. Wait, what do you mean there's no conflict? This is a dystopian young adult novel that came out during the height of dystopian young adult novel craziness. Like, shouldn't the conflict just be the people in charge are evil, let's overthrow them? Okay, okay. Like, this sounds confusing, I know. Let me explain. So the setting in this is many thousands of years after some sort of big apocalypse wiped out most of the planet. And during that apocalypse, people burrowed down underground and lived there for a while, but then over the years they built up and up and up, and eventually they came out and on the surface they built this giant city, which they call Indra, and it floats way high above the clouds, and now there's some sort of major clash stratification so that the wealthy live up on top and they have access to all this nice technology and everything, and the less wealthy live lower down, and I think a lot of them live underground, but it's never made super clear. Well, that sounds pretty normal. I'm not sure which side Kendall and Kylie think they would fall on in that equation, but, you know, it sounds standard. Yeah, it sounds pretty normal from that. And there are two main characters. There's Lex, who is an orphan, who grew up in an orphanage underground, and then she's chosen to become a member of the Population Control Force, which, despite the name, they actually do a lot more than just making sure people don't have too many children. They actually enforce the laws and some of them become members of governments and stuff, so it's, you know, it's there. And anyways, Lex is an orphan who is training to become a member of the PCF, and that's, well, that's kind of all there is to her at first, at least. And then Livia is this wealthy, socialite-type girl who was born up on the islands, they call them, on the top levels, and she is not super satisfied with the way her life is going, because she just feels very, I don't know, constricted, constrained, everything is controlled for her, and she also soared trains for some reason, and the whole first part of the book is just building up to, in Livia's storyline, it's building up to her debut, which is, I guess, where she just comes out and introduces herself to the rest of society, and then they decide who she's going to marry. I don't know, it's not super well explained. And Lex's whole storyline at the beginning is just building up to her graduating from the academy so that she can become a PCF soldier. That also sounds standard, I mean, the first 30 to 40 pages of those books were usually about the same. That's not just the intro, this is the entire first half of the book. That's half of the entire book? Yeah, the first half covers both of their childhoods going all the way up to the graduation and the debut, and then at the debut, this guy named Kane, who is a friend of Lex's from the academy, tries to assassinate Livia, at least he kind of tries, and then he gives up halfway through, and then some guards come over, beat the shit out of him and arrest him, and then Lex is, I guess, angry about that, so she decides to go and find Kane, and so she crashes her ship near Livia and tries to kill her for some reason, and then while they're fighting, a bunch of soldiers come up, and they both decide to run away for some reason, and then they go off and join the rebels, again, for some reason, because they were both pretty anti-rebel up until this point, and actually, they don't even talk about the rebels all that much, but you get the impression that they're both anti-rebel, and then they find out that they were actually twins, which should be impossible, because every couple is only supposed to have one child, and they have technology to make sure that happens, but whatever, and then they go off to find the truth, and that's how the book ends. It's a cliffhanger, clearly meant to be part of a series, but they never wrote more. Okay, that sounds bad, but it also seems like you just left out most of the motivation for why the characters did things, and that makes any story sound bad. Oh, I'm not just leaving out the motives for why they did things. The book leaves out motives for why they did things. There's no emotion in any of this. Occasionally, you'll get a bit where it's like, oh, okay, Lex is really angry at these people. We don't exactly know why, but we know she's angry at them, and so she decides she's gonna go and kill them. Okay, that makes some sense, but overall, there's just no emotion and there's no reason for doing things. Okay, yeah, that does sound pretty stupid. Isn't Kane only one letter off from Kanye, as in their brother-in-law, Kanye West? Yes, but I think that one's just a coincidence. Either way, there's a lot of weird stuff in here, like the talk about class conflict and class stratification and all that is just... I don't know, it feels odd when it's written by actual billionaires, if they weren't billionaires before, and actually Kendall might not be a billionaire. She's currently under investigation from the IRS for faking her financial records, but that's not the important part. The important part is I'm not sure on what side of the equation they think they would fall on in this situation, and them calling all of these rich people who are hoarding all the resources bad, it just feels... Well, it's remarkably close to self-awareness. Okay, wait, help me out here. Kendall and Kylie, are those the ones that started off white, but over time they've tried to make themselves look more and more Latina? No, that's all of them. Kendall is the fake billionaire, like I said. And one other thing that is extremely odd in this is how... Okay, so Olivia, the one that lives up in the technologically advanced world, she goes on several monologues about how the women up there and the men too, but mostly the women are expected to be like perfect, beautiful specimens. And so a lot of them undergo very painful genetic treatments to change the way they look. And occasionally they go through very painful plastic surgery because... and they wear weird clothes that like make their waists tiny just to... just all for the benefit of everyone around them and it's supposed to make them look beautiful and it's very clearly painted as a bad thing. Wait, so this book is talking about how plastic surgery and enhancements just to look beautiful are kind of painful and dehumanizing? Is this book just a disguised cry for help? I mean maybe, but Kendall also likes to pretend that she's like, woke or whatever by going to Black Lives Matter protests but then photoshopping that she's holding a sign, so it's pretty clear that she just went there for a picture and then left. So fuck her. And, okay, anyways, throughout all of this, though, the worst part is, as I mentioned earlier, the prose because it's very difficult to tell what's going on some of the time. Like, the two main characters, it's told from first person POVs so by following both of them, you have to make sure that it's easy to tell them apart just from their narration and this book doesn't do that. Books very rarely do that. The only one I can really think of that did it well is the Young World series and even then that one has some pretty severe problems beyond that. The point is, in Lex and Livia's narrations, they sound exactly the same and it switches back and forth between their POVs, sometimes in the middle of a page and sometimes, hell, in the middle of a page, in the middle of a fight scene where the two of them are fighting and so it's like, ha, I am winning, I am winning, I am winning, switch, I am losing, I am winning and then it's just very difficult to tell what's going on. That is possibly the worst part of this book. So, why are Lev and Livia even fighting in the first place? Well, they're fighting because Lex is looking for Cain and so she, like, stole a ship and went up to the top levels of Indra so that she could find Livia because she knew, she knows that, oh, okay, Livia was the one he tried to kill so maybe she'll know where he is, don't know why she would think that but, you know, so they're there and Lex just immediately tries to kill her while also asking her, where's Cain, where's Cain? And I don't know why he's so important to her, like, okay, they're together in a couple of scenes but I don't get the feeling that they're in love or that they're even really friends so I'm not sure why they're doing it and that's why the story is so bland. Like, I can't even say, oh, these characters are stupid or terrible people because I'm not sure what they are. Well, yeah, you're right, this does sound pretty awful so how are you planning on reviewing it? Oh, no, this is the review. I can't recommend this to anyone because, well, as I said, it's really bland and boring. It's not even funny, terrible or anything like that. It's just stupid and not even stupid. It's just boring. There's nothing here that interested me in the slightest. There's nothing here that, well, there's only so many different ways I can say that it's boring and bland and stupid and this is a vanity project from some already extremely vain celebrities so, you know, they don't need the money. I'll read something else. The end. Bye. This is the end of the review. You know what? All of my other patrons are great too. Everyone who watched this, you're all amazing and I'm aware I got some of the Kardashians' names mixed up while I was filming this but please consider that I don't care. They're all interchangeable except for Kanye because, well, you know, he's Kanye and anyways, thank you so much for watching. You're the best. Please like this video. Please comment on it and please subscribe to my channel or I will track you down and murder your entire family. Bye.