 So, some of you may remember that last year I read a book series called Guards of the Shadowlands, and that was written by a woman named Sarah Fine. And I thought Guards of the Shadowlands was pretty good, you know, not perfect. It had some issues, especially in the later part of the series and the final book. Like, it did go downhill quite a bit, but overall, really enjoyed it, and I just immediately decided I wanted to see more from that author. And so, a couple months later, when I was cancelling my audible subscription, because I don't know, I'm not getting into all the drama surrounding that lately, but I just decided I wanted to cancel it, and I used my last three credits to buy another series by Sarah Fine, which is called Servants of Fate, and I kind of regret that because this series, it is kind of similar in some ways, like it does deal with the afterlife and stuff, but it is very, very different in other ways, and overall, I just was not very into it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now when I say that both series are similar, I mean they both deal with the afterlife, although they do it in very different ways, and they both have a pretty big focus on romance, although it's much, much bigger in Servants of Fate than in Guards of the Shadowlands, and other than that, they are pretty different. Like Guards of the Shadowlands was young adults, and Servants of Fate is very much an adult romance series, like yeah, I'll be real with you, it's just straight up erotica. But I did not know that it was going to be straight up erotica when reading, and if I had known that, I would not have read it because that was one of my bigger problems with it, but I mean, I had already bought all of them by the time I realized this, so I just powered on through, and here we are. So the story is about a couple of different things, but at the beginning it is about these two siblings, adult siblings named Eli and Galina, who moved to Boston from Pittsburgh. Galina has been offered a job at a university where she's going to do research on viruses and vaccines and stuff, and Eli has managed to get a job as an EMT there, and they don't have any other family, it's just the two of them, that's why they're sticking together, and also they're from Pittsburgh, which is a desert wasteland in this world, and at first I thought this was meant to be like a fantasy version of our world, you know, because they go to Boston and that is flooded, it's like Venice, you know, instead of streets it has canals and stuff, so I thought okay this is like a parallel universe or some shit, and again, Pittsburgh is a desert, which it isn't in real life, so I was just thinking they were doing something with that, but no, it just turns out it's actually the future, like this is decades from now, maybe around a hundred years, and just climate change has gotten a lot worse, so the ocean levels have risen and flooded some areas, but then other areas have gotten a lot drier, and places are hotter, and like the world is really a mess. Now meanwhile, while they're doing this, we are also learning about how the afterlife works in this world through the eyes of a character named Casey. Now Casey is a member of the fairy family, and that's fairy as in like a boat, it's not spelled like the little dudes with wings, you know, and the fairies, they run this company called PsychoPomps, and the PsychoPomps corporation runs the afterlife, like basically the way it works is that the fates, you know, like from Greek myth, the fates have a loom where they weave out everyone's lives and everything, and when it comes to the point where someone's supposed to die, they tell this guy named Jason Moros, who is like a god of death, he's the brother of the Sisters of Fate, and he is in charge of these creatures called the Cure, who are basically the souls of dead people, like when they die they're either going to go to heaven or hell depending on how they lived, although most of them are probably going to hell because the only way you can become a Cure is if you have killed somebody before, and yeah Moros goes up to them and says, hey you can go to the afterlife or you can work for me and be my servant and you will live forever, and a lot of them take them up on that deal, and the Cure, when someone has faded to die they go up to them and they mark them, and when they do that it means they're going to die soon, but it also, that's how the Cure, the Cure choose how they die, so they can choose to let them die violently or peacefully in their sleep or of a heart attack or things like that, and then after they die a fairy is supposed to be nearby so that they can take their soul and send it to the afterlife, either heaven or hell depending on how they lived, and when they send a soul through a portal to the afterlife some coins pop out, like actual gold afterlife coins, and so the fairies and the Cure both get paid for that, like they actually go into a little bit of detail about how the Psycho Pumps Corporation will melt down coins and turn them into gold bars and then they also have to launder all the money and everything, it's like, it's kind of interesting, you know they don't go into a whole lot of detail about it, but it's clear that the author thought about that sort of thing and how this would work in the real world because obviously you can't spend gold coins very easily nowadays, it's just, I don't know, it's kind of cool, I liked it. So the afterlife here is largely based in Greek myth with some Christian myth mixed in because again they have heaven and hell and they're run by the keeper of heaven and the keeper of hell who are pretty clearly meant to be Yahweh and Lucifer, and we see them a little bit but not a whole lot, and if you couldn't pick up on it from all that, the fairies are led by somebody named the Charon, you know that's not their name, that's their title, like as in Charon, the guy who led dead souls to the afterlife, he was the ferryman who brought dead souls into the afterlife in Greek myth. Although the audiobook narrator pronounces it as Charon for some reason, I do not know why everywhere else I've ever been it's been pronounced Charon, but anyways this world is pretty interesting and in the first book it is largely just about Eli meeting Casey and falling in love with her and again she is a ferry so it kind of drags him into this world of this crazy way of running the afterlife and then we learn there's like a bigger conspiracy of people who are killing off people when they're not fated to die which is a big no-no it's like against treaties that the Kyr and the fairies have made over thousands of years and they're also wondering like who could possibly be doing this because if fate is not followed too much then it can actually cause reality to unravel and bad things to happen so no one wants this including like Jason Moro's the millennia old god of death and the fairies and the Kyr like nobody wants this this is bad and that's like the main story of the series and while this series the story for it overall is good I did enjoy it it does have a big problem for me and that's that it follows the romance series model which I didn't know about until like last year when I read a series called Elemental but apparently it's common in this genre and basically what it is is that every book focuses on a different member of the main cast who finds love and then it shows them starting their relationship and then after that's all done they just get pushed to the side and they barely show up in the rest of the series like the first book like I said is about Eli and Casey and then the other books are about a different member of the fairy family falling in love with somebody else like the second book is about Galena Eli's sister and Declan who is Casey's older brother and they fall in love and none of them ever mentioned that that's kind of weird you know like hey we're blood related and in-laws isn't that a little strange like any one thing if they brought it up and nobody thought too much of it they're like yeah it's a little weird but whatever but they just never even mention it which struck me as odd and then the third book is about Ashlyn who is Casey and Declan's older older sister uh falling in love with Jason Moros the millennia old god of death and we will get to that more later that I did not care for but yeah after reading two different series with this model I gotta say I don't like it very much because in both cases the older characters who I had gotten attached to near the beginning or the middle of the series are just completely forgotten by the end of it and they barely do anything like they barely even get any appearances or lines of dialogue in the later books and that is really really upsetting especially in the case of Eli because Eli I was really into his character in the first book and by the end of it which I'll get into in the spoiler section don't worry but by the end of it his character arc was going in a really really interesting direction like I wanted to see where he would go with this next and how he would adjust to uh to all these crazy events and how his life was changing going forward but it just doesn't it just never comes up again like he just exists and pops up a few more times after that and that's that's it it's a really big shame and you can say the same about a couple of other characters who I kind of liked but they just barely have anything to do by the climax and that's I just wasn't a fan you know I don't have a whole lot of deeper stuff to get into there I just really don't like it when characters that I like are pushed to the side and not because they like reach the end of their arc and there's not much else for them to do or because they were killed off or anything just the author didn't feel like putting them in I I don't like that now I have a few more brief spots before I go into spoilers for all three of the main books so I did really like all the unique afterlife stuff you know seeing this setting not only how earth has changed and fallen to shit in the next few decades but also just seeing how the afterlife works it's very unique you know like I said it's greek and christian mythology kind of mixed together which is similar to what her other series guards of the shadowlands did where that one was largely christian mythology but mixed with like some chinese folk religion ideas of the afterlife like how there's a whole bunch of different hells that you go to depending on exactly what you did as opposed to just one where they throw all the sinners like in christianity you know it's it is kind of neat and it is nice that in both cases these afterlives feel very different from one another but they also feel very different from the myths they're based on you know like well a couple weeks ago I did a video about how using public domain just wholesale is not a good idea and I mean this is this is how you use it properly you know you take inspiration from it then you mix it with some other stuff and then you got something totally new like that's how you do it I liked the romance in the first two books like well we'll get more into the third one in the spoiler section don't worry but in the first two books where it's uh Eli and Casey and Galena and Declan I thought the romances were handled well you know you can see these people get to know each other and get attached to one another and they fight a little bit but they also clearly care about each other and just you know it works it's kind of sweet to witness however in both cases you have one interesting character and one really boring character and in fact that goes for the third book as well because in the first book you have Eli who is a really neat dude who has a pretty dark past and we learned more about it as the book goes on and we can see he's just trying to move on with his life and trying to start over and just really wants to protect his younger sister as well because she's been through some horrible things too and he's great but then Casey just is there you know like there's nothing about her that's really bad or annoying but she just sort of exists and is in the story and falls in love with him and that's that that's all there is to it there's not a whole lot else going on there and then in the second book we have Galena who is very traumatized by some horrible stuff in her past and she's trying to work past that but also she tries to look on the bright side of things she's a very intelligent woman who sees the world in a unique way and she really does genuinely want to help people by developing like vaccines and stuff and protecting them from disease that's that's wonderful that's great that's fantastic and then Declan is there you know and that that's it and then the third book again it's Ashlyn who is there and Jason Morose who is this millennial old god of death and he's again I'll get more into it in spoilers I don't think it's handled super well but he is just more of an interesting character than her because again he's a millennial old god of death who is kind of yearning for some connection and also doesn't really want to be alive anymore but yeah no matter how well a romance is done if only one side of it is any good on their own then that drags the whole thing down it's it's upsetting and finally we get to the single biggest problem I have here which is like I mentioned this is erotica but even taking that into account everyone here is just too fucking horny all the time like constantly I mean I cannot emphasize to you just how constantly characters are thinking about and the narration is talking about dicks and boobies and butts and it like it's constant like I don't know how to describe it like I don't want to uh be getting into a dramatic scene and then all of a sudden there's an entire paragraph about how some dude's dick is getting hard and she can see the bulge through his pants or something like okay if you're gonna put that in there's a time and a place for it and the time is not right in the middle of a dramatic scene if you're going to have hardcore sex scenes which the series does they're like very x-rated don't get me wrong uh and sometimes these scenes go on for more more than one chapter by the way I would rather if you're gonna do that just be one really long chapter and not have it end like in mid thrust essentially and then it just continues on after that it's it's weird it I wasn't for that but yeah like characters being horny and everything that's fine but in moderation man like after a while it wouldn't it just be white noise even if you are into it like for me it's just kind of annoying because I find it distracting while I'm reading but I don't know I don't like the way it's handled anyways yeah that's about it like there's just constant talk about how horny characters are and it goes on for all three books and I did not like it at all this other one is actually a problem that elemental had as well like I said I'm not a fan of the way these series are structured and that's that the story is good but it's all crammed into the climax of each book you know because the majority of each book is really just focused on developing the romance there which is fine but then it's only like the last quarter of the book maybe where the actual plot gets moving and things change and things happen so like the last quarter of the first book the last quarter of the second book and the third book that one does have more stuff happening throughout at least but still like by focusing so much on the romance it makes all the other stuff feel really crammed in and it doesn't have the room to properly develop or grow so that is that that's just not great and overall weirdly enough I would say that overall this is just a sophomoric series you know it's immature because it tries to deal with some heavy heavy topics like it tries to deal with moving past the death of a loved one it deals with sexual violence it deals with horrible trauma that people have to deal with it deals with regular violence it deals with how to try and live when the world's falling apart around you it deals with the massive divide between rich and poor and how the end of the world doesn't even really affect the rich that much and it deals with all of them either very poorly or just on a bare surface level so there's not that much to write home about about them and I just wasn't a big fan of that but then it's kind of weird because Sarah finds other series that was written for teenagers is darker and more mature you know because guards of the shadowland also deals with some really heavy topics it deals with depression and suicide and sexual violence and moving past the death of a loved one and things like that and it deals with them all in very complex very interesting ways like it goes deep into these topics which is what you should do if you are dealing with these topics I don't know it's just odd to me that the same author can write something for teenagers and something for adults and the thing for teenagers is way more mature and way better handled when it talks about serious subjects so I don't know like would I really recommend servants of fate to most people no not to most people because if you're looking for like urban fantasy or something that sounds like this type of urban fantasy that you would like then no I feel like all the romance and erotica stuff would distract you and if you're looking for just romance and erotica maybe this will be something you'd enjoy but also maybe the story would just be distracting I don't know but that's that's what it is so that's about it for non spoilers and let's go into spoilers now I don't think I will ever get it they betrayed me they didn't keep their promise they tricked me and I don't care anymore okay so I need to talk more about the first book which is called marked and by the way the books in the series have the most generic one word titles like the first book is marked the second one is claimed and the third one is faded which is not a good way to handle things like if you're naming books in your series don't just call them generic one word titles please because it makes it not only hard to figure out what it's about and what it's going for but also sometimes it makes it more likely that it shares a similar title with something else like marked is also the first book in the house of night series and it makes it harder to remember like I had to look at the names of the books in the series multiple times before I remembered which is which and in which order it's like it's just not good please don't do that but anyways in marked like I said that's Eli and Casey falling in love I think that's handled fine overall like they their relationship is fine and it's not unhealthy or anything it's it's it's fine I don't have a whole lot else to say however at the end Eli dies and he be he's able to become a cure like morose comes up to him and says hey I'll make you a cure if you want or you can just go to the afterlife and I don't believe it's ever specified but it's kind of implied that he might go to hell because and like I said earlier you can only become a cure if you have killed somebody before and Eli has killed people and at first people assume it's because he was in the military and he went off to war years before the story began but no it turns out that several years before the story began when they were in Pittsburgh he and Galena were walking home one night and they got attacked by some men and they beat up Eli really badly and then they gained Galena and obviously that was horrible and traumatic for both of them and Galena doesn't know this but Eli actually tracked down all those men and killed them all afterwards which is understandable I don't I don't know if I'd recommend that course of action but it is understandable and yeah so because of that he becomes a cure and how does he adjust to being a cure you know I was thinking like the rest of the series will be about him trying to deal with this huge shift in his life and trying to deal with suddenly being immersed in this world of gods and demons and magic and stuff but that's that that's just kind of it you know he's barely featured in the second and third books and well that's annoying you know like I said his arc just gets cut off in the middle then the second book we have Galena and Declan and this one is mostly about her trying to get over her trauma from you know again being attacked by a group of men before and I think that's mostly handled well you know like there is one part where Eli is trying to help her get over it and he's just saying hey look they're memories memories can't just hurt you you remember what happened that night and then he starts like going over the events in explicit detail even while she's asking him to stop and look Eli I know you mean well and I'm no psychiatrist but I don't think that's how you're supposed to handle that sort of thing it it no it's not good and um basically Galena is being targeted by whatever force is killing people who are not fated to die and whatever force that is is like trying specifically to cause chaos and to cause a bunch of disruption and things and Galena is working on a vaccine that if it is properly developed it will allow people to be immune to like all diseases it it doesn't make a whole lot of sense really but okay whatever it's the future there's magic and shit whatever we'll we'll just roll with it and so that's why they're trying to kill her because if she does that then fewer people will die and there'll be less chaos so her and Declan to get married because if she becomes a member of the fairy family then she not only gets super healing powers and lives longer because fairies just live a long time they're not normal humans but she also will not be able to be targeted by the cure because there's a treaty that they've had in place for thousands of years so you know this is beneficial for her however in order to become a full fairy there are two things you have to do number one you have to go through the marriage ceremony which her and Declan do without any trouble and number two they have to have sex but they can't just have sex Galena has to climax during it and she has trouble doing that because of you know the thing that happened so a huge chunk of the book is just dedicated to these characters need to have sex but they can't and the fact that's a major plot point is just eye-rolling it's stupid I didn't like it and they they do eventually a Galena does eventually work through it near the end and she has sex with Declan and it works out great but the thing is when she's working through it she also is like describing the events of that night in extreme detail and it's described in a way which is clearly meant to be kind of titillating and I didn't like that because look if you're gonna have like some fantasy about non-consensual stuff thrown in there then sure you can do that I'm not saying you're a bad person for doing that or anything but it doesn't really work when you spent the better part of two books explaining how horrifying and traumatic it was for the person on the receiving end of it like it's it's much harder to separate fantasy from the reality of what that sort of thing would be like even if you are somebody who's into that sort of thing which I'm personally not but I can't imagine it would be super easy to do and then the third book is Ashlyn and Moros falling in love and honestly just why you know Ashlyn like I said is not a very interesting character and she's been just kind of a nothing presence in the series up until this point and Moros is I kind of liked him up until this point but he's been this mysterious powerful figure because again he's a millennia old god of death he's been around a long long time and he's just unfathomably powerful compared to all the regular people around him and we don't even know exactly how much he knows and what exactly he can do but he is just this weird presence in the story and him being humanized just makes him worse of a character you know like I'm not saying you can't do that but just the way it was done here I didn't like it you know and there was effort put in you know it it shows his tortured relationship with his siblings like the fates and some other gods who have like faded away into abstraction as it's referred to as like their powers there they just don't have a conscious form and like his mother is gone and he's just lonely and searching for connection basically which is why he and Ashlyn get along but then because he's basically the protagonist of the last book he gets to be the hero at the end which sucks you know like the god of chaos who is just called chaos is coming in and is going to like destroy a bunch of stuff and destroy fate and make the world fall into even more shit than it already is and moro's is the one who gets to kill him and he just I don't know like it's weird that this guy who seemed like he's just a side character for most of the series and then he comes out and gets to be the hero you know like I mentioned the elemental series before and that one every book focuses on a different character but in at the end at the climax of the whole series they all come together and work together in order to save the day so that worked but here it just doesn't I don't know the the story of all three of these books is just so different you know they're so different in what they're about and what they deal with that at times they don't even seem like they're in the same series and like alone they're all fine like the first book is about a man finding out about this magical world being immersed in it falling in love becoming a weird demon spirit thing and having to adjust to that then the second book is about getting over horrible trauma while also running for your life from forces that are out to get you and the third book is about this god of death who is becoming a bit more human like all those are fine but when you put them all in the same series it just robs all the books of their identity you know like there's nothing that ties all this together there's nothing I can say about this series that would bring it all in together and allow me to just say like yep I liked it because X or I liked it because Y or disliked it because Y or anything like that it's just it just feels like they took three very different books and tried to tie them together very clumsily and I don't know well like I said there's not a lot here that would appeal to people other than the neat world building and the sex scenes so just how do I even end this I don't know but that's all thanks for watching goodbye wow you you're still watching I I mean I guess I appreciate it but I'm not sure why I mean at this point all that we have left is all these names here these are 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