 Well, here we go. Since I need something to gesture at the wall with, I'm going to be gesturing with this handy-dandy Tomahawk, available now at Kmart. That's a joke. They don't sell these at Kmart. I don't even think Kmart exists anymore. This video is not sponsored. You know, there are 100 different book series that I could be doing this with. You know, my first very brief summary video was on Red Queen, and that was a series that people had requested I talk about in some fashion for years and years before I finally got around to it. And this time, I did not go with one people requested I talk about. I went with the Chemical Garden trilogy. Why did I do that? Exactly. Well, something about it spoke to me. You know, I very easily could have done a different series that people have been requesting, and that would get me a lot of views, and that was better known, but just something about the Chemical Garden spoke to me. It is a story about a world where everyone dies very, very young due to genetic experimentation, and so rich men will kidnap young girls and forcibly marry them. Not sure what the connection is between those two things, but you know, that does happen. And the protagonist, Ryan Ellery, is a 16-year-old girl who has this happen to her. Okay, I need to cover this thing up. This is actually sharp. Now, meanwhile, outside of the protagonist, the entire world is falling apart and becoming a sort of children of men-esque dystopia. You know, society is collapsing from the weight of sheer ennui. You know, there's a lot of people who think there's no future, and so because of that, they've become cruel and short-sighted, or people want to fix things so badly that they're willing to use any means at their disposal, including torturing and killing innocent people in search of a cure. A better book series would probably focus on all of that. This one instead decides to focus on teenage pregnancy, sex carnivals, and Ryan just sort of existing. You know, just sort of being in the vicinity of things as they happen. In spite of the setup for the story, which, you know, sounds really nasty and unpleasant, very few bad things actually happen to Ryan at any point in this series. In fact, you could argue she suffers more in the backstory than she does in the actual story. So this isn't exactly suffering porn, but it's also not focusing very much on her love story, and it's also not focusing very much on how things make her feel yet, in spite of all that, she's key to saving the world. You know, she doesn't do anything, the story isn't focused on her, and yet she is the key to saving the world, in spite of her just sort of existing. Also, brief side note, there is some sexual violence in this series, a lot less than you might think based on the setup, but there is some. However, it's pretty much all off-screen, or it's just implied, so I'm not going to talk about it very much. Just, you know, if you were wondering. These books, they just fail on every level, and yet they stand out in my mind. You know, they stand out. It feels like it was trying, I suppose, but it didn't know what it was trying to do. And I can't call the chemical garden cliched either, because it does do some unexpected stuff, but being unexpected doesn't mean you're good. The things that are unexpected in the chemical garden are unexpected because the plot goes nowhere, and very few of the characters have anything resembling an arc. The only real standout in these books at all is the setting, which I think, you know, the setting and the setup for the story are fantastic, but both of those fall apart under close scrutiny. And that's kind of what I'm known for, is scrutinizing settings beyond what anything can reasonably be assumed to stand up under. Now, when I talked about doing this series a little while ago, somebody in my comments section said that this isn't the worst dystopian series that came out during the boom of the early 2010s, but it is the one that their most surprised got made. And after reading the books, I have to agree 100% with that comment. Like, it's not the worst thing I've ever read, but I am wondering how a publisher looked at this and said, yeah, let's publish that. Because after reading, I was kind of just left with a vague sense of, wait, that that's it? That that's all that happens? But at the same time, I was left vaguely disgusted and uneasy, because again, there is some unpleasant things that happen here, but not in an interesting way. And I don't know, I just feel that more people should know about this book series, but you shouldn't have to read it. You know, you shouldn't be forced to go through all that. And part of me is tempted to say, nothing happens in these books, because at times it does kind of feel like, oh yeah, nothing happened in the chemical garden trilogy. But that's not true. Things do happen. They are just shown in the worst possible way they could be shown. You know, the protagonist never does anything. She just kind of stands nearby, and then the story resolves itself. This is by far the dullest thing I've ever read. Not the most boring thing I've ever read, because it, at least in this context, boring implies that nothing is happening. You know, I've read tons of books like that. A lot of books I've read have been boring, because nothing is really going on. Like a lot of romance novels suffer from this problem. You know, it's really just characters existing in each other's vicinity, but there's not actually a conflict or anything. So just nothing's going on. You know, that's what boring means. Dull means that things are happening, but none of them have anything resembling an emotional impact. You know, these books contain kidnapping, sexual slavery, daring escapes from gilded cages, plans to save the world, and yet none of it matters because Rhyne just doesn't participate in any of it. In fact, every problem, no matter who is behind it, and no matter who solves it, every problem is solved super easy. Which, I don't know, by the end of this I was left wondering why it took several decades to fix the problem, if the virus was that easy to fix, you know. There's also not really an antagonist, and by extension there's not really a central conflict, you know. The government isn't the antagonist, the society isn't antagonist, it isn't the antagonist, the virus that kills everybody, that's not really the antagonist. Not even the evil scientist who kidnaps Rhyne at the beginning, or her husband who she's forcibly married to, because the evil scientist and Rhyne are on the same side, kind of, sort of a little bit, and Rhyne and her forcibly married to husband are kind of on the same side, again, kind of. I don't know, it just feels like the author had the idea for the setup, but then she had no idea what she was doing or where she was going with things after the very, very beginning. From what I can tell, these books did sell pretty well when they were released, but they have not left any sort of impact beyond that. You know, very few people even remember these things, so I guess in a weird way I am here to keep the memory alive, and spoilers ahead, obviously. So before getting into the plot, let's just go over some important background information so that we all start off on the same page. The Chemical Garden is a trilogy, it's three books long. They are, in order, Wither, Fever, and Sever. Amazing titles, very easy to remember, very easy to tell apart. I totally did not need to read my notes to remember what order they went in. The series takes place a few hundred years in the future in what is now the United States, and most of the world is completely destroyed by floods and other disasters, or so we think at the beginning, leaving pretty much just the continental US left. You know, that's the only bastion of civilization in the entire world. Now around 70 years before the story begins, genetic testing created a generation of super hardy children who were resistant to most disease, and they are referred to as the first generation throughout the books, I should say. They were fine, the first generation was fine, but their kids all died very, very young. Like for females, they all die at the age of 20, and males all die at the age of 25. Absolutely no one lives past that. They call this thing that kills everybody the virus, like literally just the virus, it doesn't have an actual name, and everyone is dying, and so therefore the civilization is falling apart. Cities in the countryside are being depopulated, the government barely functions any longer, like they mentioned more than once that the president is very much just a figurehead and he doesn't actually do anything, and the new generations, the people who are born after the first generation, they can have kids, but again they die when they're either 20 or 25, so that means their kids are very, very young when their parents die, which means there's orphans everywhere, and you might be thinking that, wait this doesn't sound like a virus, it sounds like a genetic disorder, yeah that's exactly what it is. We get confirmation later on that yes it is a genetic disorder, but when it first came around apparently scientists thought that it was a virus, so they just kept calling it that, and again it's just the virus, so lazy. Also apparently literally everyone in the United States got genetic modification done because we never hear about anyone who is unaffected by the problems that everyone else has, which seems unlikely to me, given the way Americans are. There's a lot of them who will refuse to do it just because you ask them to, or because you told them to, like they just want to be contrarian, and maybe we're not unique in that regard, but still there would be a lot of people who wouldn't undergo this genetic testing, like either they would fake it or they'd hide in the woods or something. I just needed to get that out of the way. Now in this world in the present day, by the time the story takes place, it is common for young girls to be kidnapped and sold. The best-looking ones are sold as wives to rich men, and the less good-looking ones often get sold to brothels, and then they have to work as prostitutes. Now you might think that with humanity on the edge of extinction, fertile young women would be considered a very valuable resource, and maybe the government would just straight up kidnap them and force them into breeding facilities or something like that, but that would mean that our brave, delicate main character would be in an actually bad situation where she would actually suffer, and you know, we can't have that. We just want her to have dramatic stuff happen near her. We don't want her to be part of anything dramatic. The only advanced technology that we actually see or even hear about in this book series is the genetic engineering, and at one point we see a holographic TV setup. Everything else is pretty much exactly what we have in the real world, so cars, planes, you know, everything like that. Now our protagonist is Ryan Ellery. She is 16 at the beginning of the series, but the series takes place over the course of a little bit over a year, so by the end she's 17. She is originally from Manhattan, which is part of New York City, and her parents were scientists working on a cure for the virus, which is not an actual virus, but their lab was bombed years ago, and they were killed in the explosion. Now all that's left of her family is her twin brother, Rowan. They have a house together because their parents left it to them when they when they died, but they're barely scraping by with odd jobs. That said, they are still better off than most orphans. Now, Ryan is going to be represented by this picture because there is nothing actually going on inside her head. You know what? This thing sucks at pointing. Hold on a second. Now, Rowan is Ryan's brother, and he's going to be represented by Osama bin Laden. I can't tell you why he's being represented by Osama bin Laden, but I can promise you that the reason will become clear eventually. Now, next up is her husband. His name is Linden, Linden Ashby to be specific, and he is 21 years old. Linden is a house governor in Florida, which means he lives on a gigantic estate with, you know, a mansion on it and tons of open land and gardens and stuff, and I've decided that he'll be played by Gerard Way because I want to make a my chemical garden joke. The joke has now been made. Now, at the very start of the series, Linden has three wives besides Ryan, so in total he has four. The first one is Rose, who he has been married to for a while at the beginning of the series and is actually very close to death from from the virus. Okay, this thing's going to put a hole in my wall. I need to hold on. Oh, plastic training knife. You never let me down. The next wife to talk about is named Jenna. Now, she's 19 and arrives at the estate along with Ryan, and I have to specify their ages because remember, women all die at the age of 20, so I'm letting you know exactly how close they are to death and how old they are in this world setting. Now, Jenna has a bit of real personality, but the story screws her over and never gives her anything to do before it unceremoniously casts her aside, so she will be represented by Jenna Ortega. The final wife is a 13-year-old girl named Cecily. Cecily is an orphan who was specifically raised to become some rich guy's wife, so she's actually kind of okay with being in this situation, even though Ryan is not, and she is also a redhead who's kind of stupid and annoying, so I've decided she'll be played by Lois Griffin. There's also Lyndon's house master who is named Vaughn. Now, at first, when I was reading, I thought that Lyndon was the boss since, you know, he's called the house governor, so I was thinking he was the boss, and Vaughn was just like the manager of his estate, like Lyndon owned everything, but actually we find out that Vaughn is Lyndon's father and Vaughn is the one that owns everything, so I'm not sure why Lyndon is called the house governor. You think he would be just the son of the house governor or the son of the house master? Like, he wouldn't have an actual titer? But whatever. Now Vaughn is a doctor, a very, very wealthy doctor who owns most of the hospitals in this part of the country. Now, he has spent decades searching for a cure for the virus. We learned pretty early on that Lyndon actually had an older brother who lived for 25 years and then died of the virus before Lyndon was even born, so it does make sense how Vaughn would be desperate to search for a cure. He doesn't want to lose another child. Now Vaughn is a Florida man who is, in layman's terms, incorrect at being human, so he'll be represented by this picture. If you know, you know. Now like I said, a lot of girls in this world get kidnapped and sold. The people who do the kidnapping and selling are referred to as gatherers, with a capital G, because why bother thinking of an actual name? Just capitalize the first letter, and that's called world-building. Yeah, it's a proper noun now. But anyways, gatherers are not a single organization. That's just the term used for the profession. But still, they all wear gray coats. They do feature semi-prominently, though, so I needed a picture for them. And since they love human trafficking and they all wear gray coats, anytime one shows up, he's going to be represented by this Confederate soldier. There are also two big political factions in this world, the pro-naturalists and the pro-science people. The pro-science people want to find a cure for the virus, so, you know, they want doctors and scientists to continue researching. The pro-naturalists think that there's no way to ever find a cure, and so they should just give up on the experiments, which is stupid to begin with, and then it becomes a little bit more understandable, and then it becomes really stupid again. That's about all you need to know at the start. There isn't exactly a complicated political landscape or a lot of lore to rise yourself with here. It's just a couple of characters, a very basic setup for a world, and let's go. So we start our journey at Book One, wither. We begin with Rhine, the main character, imprisoned in a dark truck with a bunch of other girls. She was taken a while ago and is being driven somewhere, but she doesn't know where. And I really can't tell if this line, which is on the very first page, is awful or amazing. The door's open, the light is frightening, it's the light of the world through the birth canal, and at once the blinding tunnel that comes with death. Like, there's actually a lot of lines throughout this whole series that are like that, you know? I don't know if they're good or bad, but they do stand out. Now, a young wealthy man comes in and checks them out, who we later learned that that's Lyndon, but Rhine doesn't know that at the time. Now, all the girls are inspected, you know, they have their hips measured, their teeth checked, you know? Basically, they're making sure that they are healthy, the way you do with slaves before you buy them. And after a little bit, Rhine, Cecily, and Jenna are all selected to become Lyndon's wives, and then they are let off into his mansion. The other girls are all brought back into the truck and shot. Rhine hears them, and the sound of their screams haunts her dreams, at least for a little while. But, you know, the important part is that the gatherers took all these girls who they already kidnapped and then shot them. But why? Okay, remember, young girls are valuable in this world? Like, the gatherers already went to all the trouble of kidnapping them, so why wouldn't they just sell them to a brothel somewhere? You know? Like, we see later on that there are tons of those all over. And again, the girls who get kidnapped by the gatherers often wind up there. In fact, we learn later that Rowan searched for Rhine all over the place by looking in a bunch of brothels. Now, you could maybe say that this is like drug dealers dumping their stock before the cops show up so that, you know, they don't get in trouble, but there aren't any cops in this world. There are no legal consequences for the gatherers if they sell these girls somewhere else. And that would recoup some of their losses, or rather recoup some of their expenses from gathering them. Because think about it, you had to gas up that truck, feed yourselves, possibly feed the girls during the trip if it lasted long enough. They had to spend time setting up traps or stalking their targets before grabbing them. You know, the gatherers would want to be compensated somehow, and maybe they're worried about families seeking revenge, but their families would be likely to seek revenge whether their loved ones were kidnapped or killed. Why am I giving financial advice to human traffickers? Why? This is what this job has done to me, guys. That said, this is a good opener, pretty much the only good thing about this entire book. Now Rhine and the two others get taken in a limo, and then they get knocked out with gas. Now Rhine wakes up in a very nice bedroom two days later and throws up, and she briefly converses with a man who cleans up her vomit, and she realizes, oh okay, I haven't been sold to a brothel, I've been sold to a very wealthy man, you know, a house governor as she calls them. Now the servant who cleans up her vomit is around her age, and he's kind of good-looking, and his name is Gabriel. Now Gabriel has no personality at all, he's just the serving boy who Rhine falls in love with, so he's going to be a plank of wood. Oh, I'm sorry, was that a spoiler? Did you think that there would be an attractive boy around Rhine's age who shows up early in the story that she doesn't fall in love with? Now Rhine hears a woman screaming outside and asks what's going on, and Gabriel just tells her, no, just don't leave the room, okay, and she's like really mad, so she picks up a pillow and screams into it, and she specifically says it's out of rage, but she never displays any sort of rage later. She's just mad at this point, and then later she's not. Now she goes out for a walk in the garden on the grounds, you know, no security or anything, she's just allowed outside, and later, though, she's confined to that wing of the house, like the floor that the wives live on, the wives' floor, and it's not as punishment or anything, that's just how they're kept, because the people who run the house think that they might run off and they don't want them to do that, and yet when Rhine first shows up, she's allowed out and she doesn't try running. This doesn't add up at all. Now Rhine is worried about her brother while this is going on, in fact a huge chunk of this first book is literally just her being worried about her brother, and she thinks about how she wants to escape and go home, and then she starts thinking about how. Now you may be thinking that this is the beginning of a story arc where Rhine explores the grounds, figures out its security features, and then devises ways around them, and you, my good watcher, would be wrong. That would be cool, but it doesn't happen. Now apparently Brides are sometimes flaunted in public, like Rhine specifically thinks that Brides are flaunted in public, so she's going to like charm her way into Lyndon's life, and then he'll take her out in public, and then that's going to be giving her an opportunity to run off, like she thinks that like twice, and then never does anything with it, but yeah. The Brides are flaunted in public, you know, to the point where governors even just show off these girls that they have kidnapped on television. Okay, in this world it is common knowledge that young girls are kidnapped and sold to rich men as wives, so you have a lot of very angry young people with no future, many of you whom probably know someone who was taken or killed by gatherers, and the House governors decide to flaunt the girls that they've kidnapped on TV. I'm sorry, that's a bad idea. That would lead to riots and uprisings, like that's a very good way to get an angry mob to come to your house and lynch you. I'm really not joking or exaggerating, it makes no sense that they would do that. Now Rhine does not listen to Gabriel, she leaves her room, and in another nearby room she sees a very sick young woman named Rose. Rose is about 20 years old, so she's sick because she is right now dying of the virus, and the two of them talk for a bit and they start to bond. Now Gabriel comes back in and then he tells Rhine, hey you're not supposed to be in here, get back to your room, because apparently her door was supposed to be locked. Gabriel just forgot to lock it. Now later when Rhine sees him, Gabriel has bruises and is limping, so we find out he was punished for accidentally leaving her door unlocked. We don't actually get confirmation of that, that's just what Rhine believes, it's just conjecture, but I guess it does technically make sense. So Rhine does go back to her room, and like I said, the wives have their own floor, here's a map of it. This is like an official map that the author released at one point. I don't know why they felt the need to give us this, because it's not like a particularly complex layout, but you know it's there. Now in the morning some older women who are from the first generation wake Rhine up and they bathe her, and they remark how pretty she is, because she's the main character, of course they need to remark how pretty she is. This is where we learn that she has heterochromia, meaning she has one blue eye and one brown eye, because again she's just so special, and she gets dressed up all nice, has her hair done, has makeup put on, and then another girl, an attendant whose name is Deirdre? I think that's pronounced Deirdre. I'm going to be saying it as Deirdre. She finds out that this young girl is going to be her new attendant, and Deirdre brings her over to Rose. Now Deirdre as her attendant is basically her servant, and Rhine describes her as a little girl who's half her height. But Deirdre doesn't talk like a child at all. She talks like a 40-year-old woman who's been an attendant for a dozen rich girls already. So at first I was kind of confused. I was like wait, is the author just bad at writing kids, or is Deirdre like just really short, or is she a dwarf? Now later we do get confirmation that Deirdre is around nine or ten years old, so yes, the author is just very very bad at writing children. Also at no point do any of the characters or the book itself point out that it's kind of fucked to use children that young as your servants. Just just throwing that out there. If you're thinking that's bad, then that means you're still human, but the books never ever stop and realize that. Now like I said, Rose is very very sick, and she's been receiving a lot of care around the clock. She's coughing a lot, she's very sleepy. Mentally she's kind of out of it. Like it's like the latter stages of cancer almost. And this is also where Rose mentions that they are in Florida. This is where we first find out, and that's very far from Ryan's home in New York. This is also where we first learned that the house governor is named Lyndon, because we saw him earlier, we just didn't get his name. Now Rose is his first wife, meaning the most favored, and because Lyndon is 21, and Ryan is 16, that means they'll both die in four years, which is around the same time. So Rose tells Ryan that Lyndon bought her and the other two wives because he really just didn't want to die alone. You know, he's losing the wife he actually loves, and so he just got these others as a shallow replacement. And it upsets Ryan because that is very objectifying, and yeah honestly. Like again, there's a lot of points early on in the books where I was on Ryan's side because she's upset, and she was right to be upset. Now throughout the next chunk of the book, Ryan and Rose get to know each other and they become friends. At least we're told that they get to know each other and become friends. You know, we really just get a couple lines where Ryan says that they became friends over the course of the next couple of weeks, but you know, we don't actually see most of it. Now, Ryan does not spend any of that several weeks of time plotting her escape or thinking about revenge on the people who took her. She is literally just chilling with her new sister wife. Thrilling. Now later, Ryan is taken to another wing of the mansion, which is a medical wing. It's like a small hospital that Vaughn has set up because again, he is a doctor. And Ryan freaks out and passes out. I think she was just being taken here for an examination, but it's never made super clear. Now while she's passed out, Ryan has a flashback to when she was 13, which is after her parents were killed. In the flashback, a man breaks into her and her brother's house very, very quietly while they're sleeping. And he holds a knife to Ryan's throat and then tells Rowan, do not move or I will kill her. And then he takes out a gun and shoots the guy. And we find out pretty quickly that the man was a gatherer. And they know that he's a gatherer because all gatherers wear gray coats. Okay, wearing a uniform is typically something you do when you want to be easily identified. You know, these guys are criminals. They would want to keep a low profile. Or even if there's not actual cops or anybody to come after them, they would still want to keep a low profile so that their targets don't, you know, run away from them or have their guard up. They wouldn't walk around with a giant flashing neon sign saying, Hey, I'm dangerous. But really, this flashback is just meant to clarify that this world is very dangerous. And that Ryan has known she's at risk of kidnapping for kidnapping for several years, and that her brother is willing to go to great lengths to protect both her and himself. Like, again, he was 13 years old, he did not hesitate to blow that guy away with an actual shotgun. Now, Ryan wakes up and nothing bad happened while she was in the medical wing. And she gets made up by Deirdre because her wedding is soon. You know, that's the important part about books like this. We need to have a scene where the protagonist wears a pretty dress and gets to have makeup on so she looks super, super beautiful. But we also have to make it clear that she's annoyed by it and only doing it for the benefit of other people. If she liked being made up and having her hair done and everything, then that might make her look vain and we can't have that. So the wedding is very, very short, thank God. And the wives just sort of stand by Linden and then they recite their vows. And Ryan is the second one to say her vows. Like, it goes Jenna first because she's the oldest and then Ryan and then Cecily as the youngest. And I just want to point out that we're almost 50 pages in and we're just now getting to the actual wedding base. This is also where we first hear about how Ryan's parents worked at a lab and the lab that they were working at that was researching a cure exploded. And there is no further elaboration on this until much later. She just kind of thinks, yeah, the lab my parents worked and exploded. And then just that, that's it. Now at dinner after the wedding, they finally meet Vaughn, Linden's dad and the house master. Now, Ryan deduces that he is the one who beat Gabriel earlier. We don't get actual confirmation of this. And Ryan comes to that conclusion, despite Vaughn not saying a single word to her, but you know, like, I guess it's correct. Now, again, this guy is supposed to be the villain. Vaughn is supposed to be the villain, the closest thing to a villain that not just this book, but the entire series has. And this is the first time that we're even hearing about him. 70 pages in. Now, he's first generation, so he's pushing 70 years old at this stage, but he's aged pretty well and genetic engineering means he lives longer, so he looks a lot younger, probably around 50-ish. Now, Ryan is worried about having to consummate her marriage with Linden now, because she's a virgin, and the idea of, you know, having to have sex with this guy is off-putting to her, understandable, given the circumstances. But we get confirmation that Linden is not going to consummate the marriage until after Rose dies. However, in spite of Linden's dick remaining bone dry, he takes Ryan on a walk through the garden. Isn't that nice of him? Almost makes you forget that he literally bought her. Now, this is where we learn that the whole world was destroyed in a war, except for North America. Or, rather, a war and some other disasters, including flooding. Like, I assume the ice caps just melted. Now, Ryan Fane's ignorance about the world and Linden tells her about these things. He's really interested in history and architecture, but he also seems pretty distant. Again, remember, at this point, we hear that he literally only bought Ryan and the others so that he wouldn't die alone, because the girl he actually loves is on death's door. And you might be wondering why Ryan is feigning ignorance here and just letting Linden tell her things? Like, is she faking being stupid so he doesn't suspect her trying to escape or anything? Nah, she's just feigning ignorance so that she can have a conversation with this guy. Like, I don't know. Now, he says that the other wives are only there at his father's insistence. I don't know if I believe that, to be perfectly honest with you, but that's what he says. Because of that, he is really kind to all three of his new wives. Again, you could almost forget that he engages in human trafficking. Now, after that, Ryan goes to the wives floor. And actually, that's where she spends the bulk of this freaking book. I swear to God, it's so annoying. The wives aren't exactly imprisoned there. Like, they have pretty much everything they need. They get food brought to them. But the only way out is an elevator and that requires a key card to access. So, Ryan and the others spend months of their time there. They're just reading, watching TV, getting to know each other. There's a lot of references to how Jenna likes to read cheesy romance novels. That doesn't lead to anything, but there's a lot of references to it. And in spite of them spending so much time here, the wives floor has zero presence in my mind. You know, it doesn't have any character or stand-out aspects to it. It's literally just the place where they live. Now, Ryan has another flashback to home. And basically, there was a really cold night and an orphan came to their door and asked to come in. And her brother, Rowan, just let the orphan freeze to death on their porch and then left their body there for a while to serve as a warning for others. Rowan seems like kind of a psychopath. Keep that in mind, because it is relevant later, I promise. Now, Ryan, Jenna, and Cecily get to know each other a bit. We don't see any of it, just like with Ryan and Rose getting to know each other. But we get a few lines with Ryan saying they got to know each other. And so they became closer. And I guess that technically counts. Now, Jenna, as the oldest, seems really, really unhappy about this situation. But she also seems very resigned to her fate. You know, she's 19. She has less than a year to live. And she figures she may as well just waited out in this mansion, because at the very least, this place is safe and she'll be well fed and well cared for. We also find out that her sisters were kidnapped along with her. And so they were all in the truck, meaning they were all killed at the beginning of the book. So it's easy to see how she just doesn't really see a point in escaping. Like, as far as we know, she doesn't have any other family or anything out there. She puts on a happy facade, but there is clearly a lot of rage bubbling below the surface. You know, she hates Linden. She hates Vaughn. She hates this house. And even if she doesn't want to escape, she very quickly agrees to help Ryan escape. Now, Cecily is left out of the plan largely because Ryan finds her annoying. Like, that's pretty much her only real reason. Just like, I find that girl annoying. I'm not going to let her in on my escape plan. Now, again, Cecily is 13 years old and spent her whole life up to this point in an orphanage and she was preparing for this sort of role. So she actually kind of likes being here. You know, like, this is a nice place where, again, she's safe and well fed and cared for and everything. So to her, this isn't so bad. Now, after months of just sitting around, Cecily gets bored of playing video games and watching old movies and she wants to do something real, but she can't because they're not allowed to leave this floor. And at this stage, you might notice that a lot of things in the book just sort of happen. You know, they don't lead into anything. They aren't actually interesting in their own right either. Things just happen. Now, Ryan and Gabriel flirt for a little bit, which seems dangerous to me considering, you know, everything. Like, he's just flirting with his boss's wife, but what do I know? And now they're in love, I guess. That seriously is it. Like, there was nothing else to it. It's literally just, they flirt for a bit and now they're in love. Like, there's no moment where they connect over something or realize that they like the other. It's just, they flirt for a bit and now they're in love. Now, Ryan really clearly doesn't want to be here. Gabriel is an orphan who has nowhere else to go and has been a servant at this place for many years. They're just, they're just in love now. Now, finally, Rose dies. Yeah, a thing happens in this book. Wow, I can't get this off. Now, finally, something happens and Rose dies. She's gone. She's like, she succumbs to the virus. And again, this is at this point, Ryan has been here for like two months, maybe we don't get an exact timeframe, but she's been here for a while. And after she dies, Lyndon comes to her in the night and holds her and cries in bed with her and just falls asleep next to her. He doesn't try to have sex with her or do anything else. In fact, the entire book, he doesn't try to have sex with her or do anything because there's a moment in the next morning where Ryan feeds him blueberries and she doesn't hate him now, I guess. Ryan should really hate Lyndon. You know, he kidnapped her and he keeps her here against her will or at least we later find out it was mostly his dad, but at this stage she at least thinks that it was Lyndon. But from this point forward, she decides, you know what, Lyndon's not so bad. I think he's all right. And again, later, we learned that Vaughn is the one who organized the purchase of the wives from the gatherers. Lyndon didn't know how they were brought to the mansion, even though again he was at the truck and was inspecting some of the girls there. Basically, Lyndon is really stupid, okay? He thinks they all volunteered. The important part is that he never does anything wrong. That way, Ryan can be attracted to him without feeling weird about it. But again, at this stage of the story, Ryan doesn't know that Lyndon didn't do anything, so she really should hate him. Now, Cecily is starting to get really resentful of Lyndon because he won't kiss her, even though she keeps trying to kiss him. Did I mention that Cecily is 13 years old? Cecily, however, is convinced that Ryan and Lyndon had sex the night that he spent with her, and so she's really jealous because of it. Oh, don't be such a prude, Cecily says. So did you consummate? She leans in. Was it absolutely magical? I bet it was. That line makes me uncomfortable in ways that I have difficulty articulating. Time to abruptly go to the next plot point. So Ryan tells Gabriel about how she was captured. Basically, her and her brother were tight on cash, so she went to a clinic to sell bone marrow, but it turns out the advertisement she saw was a trap, and so that's where gatherers were waiting, and they snagged her and took her to Florida. That's literally it. Now, her and Gabriel are in the elevator at one point, and it drops to the basement because apparently a hurricane is blowing in, and elevators drop to the basement when a storm comes in as a precaution. I don't know enough about elevators to know if that's actually something that they do, but sure, we'll go with it. And they see men in hazmat suits taking Rose's body somewhere so that Vaughn can study it. Now, at this point, they told Lyndon, or at least Vaughn told Lyndon that Rose had been cremated, and he actually gave him some of her ashes to spread. And again, remember Vaughn is trying to find a cure to the virus. So basically, he's taken her body without permission and is going to cut it apart, do some sort of experiments on it. The morality of that is, yeah, you shouldn't take people's bodies without permission, even if they're a corpse, you know, that's still not okay. But this moment where they find out about it, this is the ultimate betrayal as far as the book is concerned. Him lying and taking her body without permission, again, that's bad. But this is supposed to be like the worst thing he does in the book, the thing that really solidifies him as a villain. Not him kidnapping and enslaving young girls, not him beating Gabriel for forgetting to lock a door, like dissecting somebody who was already dead. That's where he crosses the line. And we later find out that he was actually giving Rose experimental treatments during all of this, and that extended her life by several months. So I don't know, I feel like being able to look at her body and see how his experiments went, I feel like that's not that bad. So Lyndon and his three remaining wives start having dinner together almost every night. And I guess they start to like each other a little bit more. At dinner, they suggest visiting the nearby Orange Grove afterwards, and Lyndon is really sad because that was Rose's favorite place. Now Jenna and Ryan are really happy about seeing him be upset, even though Ryan liked him a few pages ago. Again, I don't understand what the author was going for at any point in this series. Now, while this is going on, Ryan thinks about how going out to the grounds will give her a chance to look for the exit, because the mansion is huge, but it's also on a massive, massive estate, and Ryan cannot see the edge of it from her window. And even when she's been allowed to look at the grounds before, unsupervised, even though she's not allowed to do that anymore, again, it doesn't make sense. But even when she was out before, she couldn't see the edge of the estate. So it's really big, and she doesn't know where to go to leave. Now this whole time, the past couple of months that she's been here, she hasn't been doing anything to try and escape, remember? She hasn't been thinking of a plan, she hasn't been scouting out the mansion, she hasn't been stealing anything that would be useful, you know, like a screwdriver or other tools for bypassing security, a key card for the elevator, which remember, she can't leave the wives' floor without one of those, you'd think she'd be looking for one, money for bribing people, or for trying to find transportation, weapons to, you know, fight people, or take them hostage or, you know, something. She's not doing anything to try and escape. She's just occasionally thinking about how she wants to leave. And after a certain point, I just have to assume that she's okay being there and doesn't want to admit it to herself. So they go out for a walk at the Orange Grove, and Rhine doesn't see any exit. A thrilling scene, I swear. We learned that Lyndon and Rose had a baby about a year ago, but the umbilical cord strangled it and so it, they don't have a baby anymore. Wow, I should really word that better. We learned that Rose and Lyndon had a baby about a year ago, but the umbilical cord strangled it and it died. So they were both looking forward to being parents, and they were both like mentally very, very badly affected, let's say, by the death of their child. Now, Lyndon, I guess, gets over Rose's death at some point during all of this, and then he starts having sex with Cecily. I don't know if you remember this, but Cecily is 13. You know, before the author Lauren Bistofano settled on the title The Chemical Garden, it was originally going to be called The Statutory Garden. Now, Rhine is upset with Lyndon, not for the statutory rape though. Like, she's okay with that. She just doesn't want to let on that she's upset with him. So she pretends, sort of pretends to be into him. Again, I don't know why she's upset with him, why she's not. It just, it really, none of this makes any sense. Now, a few days later, Cecily collapses and they're all worried and they take her to the hospital wing, but we find out that she's actually just pregnant. So she's a little bit sick right now. She's 13! My neighbors are probably really upset at me right now. I'm not apologizing, they're twats. And throughout all of this, Rhine and Gabriel continue to, I, I don't know, I guess they're falling in love, technically, in a technical sense. I know, he says, and I feel his arms shift. I've never been this close to him before. He's taller and sturdier than Lyndon, who is a few pounds away from blowing away. Hey, some of us have trouble gaining weight, you stupid bitch. Rhine tells him about home and she considers letting him in on the escape plan, such as it is right now. Again, there's no actual plan. Now, sometimes Rhine is allowed on the grounds unsupervised, so she looks around for a road because there isn't a road around anywhere. Like, again, the estate is huge and Vaughn drives out sometimes and sometimes other cars come and go, but there's no trail or road that they take. Like, they just drive across the grass and they never leave tire tracks in the grass. I'm not sure why it's set up this way, but sure, whatever. And at this point, Rhine has been here for about six months and she is no closer to leaving than she was the day she arrived. Now, a hurricane comes along and so everybody all shelters in the basement. And while they're there, Lyndon shows Rhine some of his house designs because Lyndon is actually an architect or he's studying to become an architect. He wants to be an architect, but he's a little too young to actually be one. And they almost kiss, but she also thinks about how she hates him because now she has to hate him for this scene to have any point. Now, later Vaughn actually tries to reassure her that he will find a cure for the virus soon. Now, one day another hurricane comes because I mean the weather in this world is kind of fucked in general. Like, hurricanes do hit Florida, but in the books they are much more powerful and much more frequent than they are in the real world and they also occasionally get snow storms and stuff. Just throwing that out there. But anyways, a hurricane comes and Rhine takes that as an opportunity to run away. So she runs out onto the grounds and she finds a little white house, not a real sized one, but like a decorative lighthouse. And she climbs up a bit and she sees the exit gate. Well, she sort of sees the exit gate, like some of the trees surrounding the property, including some of the trees by the exit, are holograms. Is that just for aesthetic purposes? Is it to discourage escape attempts? Is it a desperate attempt to inject some drama into this book? I'll let you be the judge of that. So yeah, Rhine climbs up and she sees the exit and then she gets hit by some flying debris because she ran off in the middle of a fucking hurricane. And then she falls off and she might have died, but Gabriel was there to help. And she wakes up later. She has a lot of injuries, but she is alive. She's in the hospital wing of the mansion. And Vaughn actually tells her at this stage that Rose once tried to escape through the air vents when she was 11. Why did she go through the air vents? I'm not sure. There's not any actual security here, but Rose tried to escape through the air vents when she was 11. And he also tells Rhine that Rose's parents were going around saying that if they couldn't find a cure, then maybe there's people in other countries who'd be able to. But that doesn't make sense. The rest of the world is supposed to be destroyed. But they were all killed. Her parents were both killed in a car bomb. And so after that he, I guess he just took Rose in and took care of her. And then her and Lyndon fell in love and then, you know, married and the rest is history. And this is the point where we learn about the two factions. Like I remember I mentioned earlier, the pro science people and the pro naturalists, who think it's too late and that experiments on children are unethical. Like it takes until this point before we learn about either of those. And then Vaughn basically tells Rhine that he knows she tried to run and he threatens her life and says, if you try to run again, I will hurt you. So Rhine later tells Jenna about this and they're both like, yep, she's that guy's bad news. And Rhine spends a little bit of time feeling bad for Lyndon because he has to live here and has this guy as his father. Like, shut up. One day while Rhine is in bed, her and Gabriel kiss and she has to keep it a secret. And Lyndon later wants to take her to an architectural expo and she sees it as a chance to escape. And she actually offers to let Gabriel escape with her. And then this line comes up, I wasn't fighting for my life, I say, squeezing his hands. If I'd had my way, I would have died right there and it wouldn't have mattered. But do you know what keeps me going every day? That river, Rhine. I think my parents gave me that name for a reason. I think it means I'm supposed to go somewhere. This is me fighting for my life. I mean it is confirmed that her parents named her after the river Rhine. What? Now Deirdre almost catches Rhine and Gabriel together but Deirdre is fine with it and she won't tell so that doesn't go anywhere. Deirdre does, however, tell a story about Rose and Lyndon's dead baby. See, when Rose went into labor, Lyndon was away doing, it doesn't matter, he was away being dramatic so that he could not be present for this part of the story. And the pain was so bad that Rose had to be sedated by Vaughn. And later when she came to Vaughn said, yeah, you had the baby but it died. And Deirdre says that she heard the baby crying for a bit, which implies that it wasn't strangled by the umbilical cord and maybe Vaughn actually killed it. We don't get confirmation but that's what they're saying right now. Now Rhine does go to the Architectural Expo with Lyndon. Nothing happens there. Once again she doesn't seem to actually want to escape. She just thinks about how she wants to escape sometimes. She doesn't look around for an opportunity. She doesn't learn the layout of the area outside the mansion. She doesn't seek help from anyone. Just, nope, she's just there for a bit. Now then the two of them go home and he asks her why she wanted to be a bride. Because again, he at this point thinks that she came willingly, even though again he was like inspecting all the girls and presumably he did see his dad pay the gather. I don't know. This part doesn't make sense. Lyndon is stupid but yeah he asked her why she wanted to be a bride and Rhine does not correct him. Now would probably be a good opportunity to get help escaping or at the very least tell Lyndon off and call him a dumbass and say he sucks or you know something but yeah he just doesn't realize that her running off into the storm earlier when she got hurt, he doesn't realize she was trying to run. So this guy is both stupid and a pedophile yet the book and those sequels are trying to make him seem like he's not that bad. Like this book just has countless opportunities to have something happen, anything happen but because Rhine is so devoid of anything resembling a freaking personality nothing happens. Like if she hated Lyndon and made a conscious choice to hide the fact that she hates him so that she could gain his trust and use that against him that would be one thing but she just has no thoughts or opinions at all except occasionally thinking that he's cute and kind of nice. Like whatever story the author was trying to tell having such a dull protagonist really really detracts from it and I'm sorry I wasn't planning on going into this much detail regarding criticisms because this is really meant to be more of a summary with occasional criticism it's just that describing the plot when there's basically nothing happening would get pretty boring very quickly. So the next day Vaughn takes Rhine mini golfing and that's where we see that they have a mini golf course and the lighthouse that she climbed is actually one of the obstacles there and he shows her how to swing the club and actually touches her a lot during this which she's very uncomfortable with and if you're thinking that this is implying he has some sort of sexual feelings for her or the other wives it's not saying that I don't think like he never tries anything with them she's just uncomfortable with him in this one scene and then it never comes back up. Now later Rhine learns that Gabriel was taken to the basement and hasn't come out and he's gone for several days and she starts worrying about him but another servant brings her breakfast one morning and tells her to look in the napkin and there is a blue june bean in it and that's supposed to be a message from Gabriel saying that he is still nearby now if you're wondering why there's a blue june bean a lot of plants in this world are genetically altered and artificial in fact they mention that when they're walking around in gardens and stuff they have a really fake sort of chemical smell to it you might say that they're in the middle of a chemical garden now one morning Rhine goes to speak with Jenna and she sees that her and Lyndon have actually started having sex it is consensual you know Jenna at least seems into it how long was he here I say in a measured tone uh all night she says and collapses back into bed I thought he'd never leave he thinks if we do it a bunch of different ways it'll get me pregnant I'm fighting not to blush the Kamasutra book one of Cecily's favorites is open page down on the floor so yeah Jenna doesn't seem super into it but she's like being okay with it when he's there for I don't know why but I guess that is technically consensual and for whatever reason they're having trouble conceiving but I like to imagine that Lyndon just doesn't know how to have sex like he's just had a super sheltered life so they're just hugging while naked and then he's wondering why she's not getting pregnant now in the last book like near the very end of the last book we learned that Jenna is actually infertile right now because her uterus has a bunch of scar tissue in it and from what I gathered that usually happens when somebody has had either a miscarriage or an abortion which implies a few things about her and her backstory it's a pity none of those things are ever explored but then in spite of Jenna and Lyndon having sex now she says Rhine says that Jenna has held on to her dislike of this place for 10 months which at this stage they've been there for 10 months so like again I'm not sure why she's having sex with him if she truly hates him did he force the issue if so fuck him but like I just I don't know like does she hate Lyndon does she hate the circumstances she's in but thinks that Lyndon is okay is she faking being into him for some reason like we'll never know like we never know exactly what is motivating Jenna in this situation like she's 10 times more interesting than Rhine but the book is committed to never letting us experience any of that now Lyndon tells Rhine that the stress of the situation is getting to all of them so he gives her a key card to the elevator which means that now Rhine can move about the house and go outside without an escort even though she could do that earlier but now now she can do it yeah that's great and really he's literally just giving her a means of escape like she she didn't do anything to earn it herself just Jenna convinced him to give her the means to escape awesome and Jenna later tells Rhine that Gabriel has been permanently reassigned to the basement and they aren't allowed to go down there and Jenna actually tried to find Gabriel down there earlier but Vaughn kicked her out and he also did something unpleasant to her that she won't talk about and we never find out what it was but it was something now she agrees to make a distraction while Rhine goes to look for Gabriel in the basement now Cecily goes into labor which seems like it would be a good distraction so Rhine would have a chance to go look for Gabriel but she can't bring herself to leave so she's just like there well Cecily the 13 maybe 14 year old girl gives birth and the baby is stillborn or so it seems like he's fine in just a minute so there was really no point to making us think that the baby was stillborn now they named the baby Bowen which sounds a lot like Rowan so I'm sorry if you get those two confused but just remember Bowen is a baby he never does anything if anything important happens and you're getting the names confused it's Rowan. Lyndon says he wants to have a baby with Rhine too one day that again that never goes anywhere but she finally finally goes to the basement it took a while but she goes to the basement and the only way she was able to get there is because Jenna set some curtains on fire as a distraction and Gabriel is just there you know he's just he's just chilling he's just working down there and Rhine tells him she wants to run off and he agrees and the plan they come up with is that when a garbage truck comes to take away waste he will follow it to find the path out even though they already know the path out that's why Rhine went on the lighthouse earlier and then Rhine leaves the basement with no issues now soon after this Jenna starts coughing and showing other signs of the virus so she's reaching the end which is weird because she's still not 20 years old yet and she dies very quickly and everyone is sad about it okay seriously can i can i not get this thing off she dies quickly and everyone is sad about it there we go yeah there's a joke about me having trouble getting girls off there but i'm not going to make it now throughout this Von has not allowed Cecily to breastfeed Bowen because he i i think it's because he wants to keep them from bonding i don't know why he wants to keep them from bonding i guess it's really just because he's evil like it doesn't serve any of his ultimate goals at all like again his ultimate goal is curing the virus and supposedly all this other evil stuff he's doing is in service of that but like just that he's just being evil here now Cecily eventually tells Rhine that she knew about the escape plan and she actually told Von about it and then Rhine realizes that oh Jenna didn't just die early from the virus Von killed her and then she gets really mad at Cecily for ratting them out and then she tells her off and runs off and Cecily is crying and very upset about it now finally Rhine and Gabriel just run off together in a snowstorm like again despite Von knowing that they're going to escape there's no extra security at all they literally just run out the back door and run off that's stupid use your common sense i have gotten way too much mileage out of that clip but you know what books need to stop doing stupid shit uh basically Rhine and Gabriel reach the outer gate and it's locked neither of them could have foreseen this obstacle who would have ever thought that the gates to a really big mansion full of expensive valuable stuff who would have ever expected the outer gates to be locked so they just bang on the gates for a bit and then like fuck we're never going to get out of here but then a random attendant comes by and he says hey Cecily told me to come help you guys and then he unlocks the gate and this guy doesn't get a name he never comes back but he just he helps them escape now they run off the estate go into the city and they have no money with them you'd think that they would steal some or at least Rhine would steal some but they just they have no money with them so they sneak into a movie theater and wait until morning this escape plan is really shitty both from a storytelling perspective and how easily it should have gone wrong because it's bad from a storytelling perspective because it required no work on Rhine's part you know she didn't come up with any actual plan like i don't know if you could call this a plan at all they literally just run out the back door like that that's not even a plan really but it required no work on Rhine's part there was no improvising when something goes wrong if security here was even slightly thought out then this would have failed wait i'm sorry i forgot there's one really really important detail to the plan that i didn't mention Rhine is actually in disguise when this is happening her disguise is that she puts in green contacts that's brilliant no one will ever recognize you with green eyes Rhine so yeah Rhine and Gabriel steal a boat and then they sail off it's remarkably easy to steal a boat in this wealthy area i guess they just left the keys on the dashboard and then that's the end of the book that's it like that that's the climax now we're on book two which is called fever we start off with Rhine and Gabriel wet and running on a beach some authorities were apparently chasing them so they just abandoned the boat that they stole earlier like they jumped off the deck and then swam to shore and then started running now we later learned that they made it all the way to south carolina which is actually pretty far but you know they didn't make it all the way what happens if they catch us Gabriel says they don't care about us i say someone paid them a lot of money to make sure that boat is returned to them i bet i'm pretty sure they would want to catch criminals but okay and right after that line Rhine thinks about how there's no police anymore okay so there is a government still it's not very functional but there is still a government in this world so they would want to protect property rights and the physical safety of people who work in the government as well as those who support them and keep them in power you know we find out later that the president of the united states and vaughn actually know each other and there's also a whole bunch of other rich people who still live in luxury while most of the population is starving they would probably want someone standing between them and the angry mobs and like there are like private security forces but none of them ever actually do anything so like why would they get rid of cops i just i don't understand so ryan and gabriel make it to the beach and then they start watching walking ryan also mentions at this point she has some jewelry that she was wearing when she escaped remember how i said they don't have any money you'd think she could have like pond that you know sell the jewelry and then they could buy some bus tickets and then ride up to new york like we learned in this very book the buses are still running like they take a bus later on so like that was an option why didn't they do it because they're stupid that's why that's why they didn't do it so anyways they see a ferris wheel in the distance and ryan confirms that they have no further plan because gabriel asks her so what's the plan and she says my only plan is to get back to my brother like verbatim that's what she says that's that's a goal that's not a plan a plan is the steps you take to reach a goal this is how words work people christ almighty so anyways they see the ferris wheel in the distance and then they approach the ferris wheel it's in some sort of carnival or circus like it has a bunch of lights and activity around it but it's also surrounded by a fence and when they go near the fence a bunch of people attack them and beat them up a little and then capture them and drag them inside the carnival somewhere and they are taken to an old woman and she asks who sent them and the woman calls ryan goldenrod which is a type of flower i don't know why she calls with that but she does now the old woman is named madame soleski usually she's just called madame or the madame though and she actually dresses ryan's wound for her she wears gaudy jewelry she switches between a bunch of different fake accents like sometimes she talks like she's russian other times she talks like she's french she puts on a nice facade until you annoy her or defy her in any way so you know what angelica houston feels appropriate now the madame tells ryan that if she stays at her carnival of amour amour being the french word for love then she'll be protected and we learned that the carnival is just a really big brothel like she's asking ryan to become a prostitute she figures out that ryan was some rich guy's wife and she figures out that she ran off with an attendant and then she asks why and ryan says she started an affair with gabriel because her husband was impotent i'm not sure why she lied this line never comes back in any way but you know she that's what she tells her and i'm also not sure why the madame asks ryan to be a prostitute when she seems to force other girls into it like she seems to have no qualms about that but you know whatever now she lets her and gabriel sleep in a tent together and gabriel was beaten a lot more badly than ryan was so he's actually been sedated now the medicine that gabriel was sedated with was administered by a girl whose name is lilac she's not actually that important but you know i'm giving her a picture anyways she deserves it the next morning madame celeski takes ryan to a tent where all of the other girls sleep during the day you know that their prostitutes so they usually work all night having sex with clients and so they sleep during the day and all of the girls are named after colors why why why not just use their names you know we're not trying to protect their identities here you know like like a real brothel if the prostitutes had a lot lives outside of it then yeah they'd probably want to avoid stalkers and stuff so they would like give fake names to clients that would make sense then but in this situation they don't have a life outside the brothel they're just there all the time so i i guess maybe this is a way for the madame to dehumanize them and make herself okay with horribly mistreating them i'm not sure though now lilac was first found by the madame a couple of years ago and she was heavily pregnant and she gave birth very quickly and now she has a young daughter named maddie now maddie does feature in this story but she's a toddler all toddlers kind of look alike she doesn't need a picture you know what she looks like in fact actually a lot of the girls at this brothel get pregnant and there's a lot of like small children running around i guess condoms don't exist like it's confirmed later that the government did outlaw birth control but people find ways around every law like you know they would find illicit ways of getting you know condoms or other contraceptives plus you could always pull out and abortions are a thing now the madame takes ryan on a brief tour and she has a multi page monologue about how love is dumb and then she tells ryan that she's so special because she's the main character so she won't be having sex with clients now she doesn't know she's a virgin at this point remember she just tells her you're so special you're not going to be having sex with clients and later when her and gabriel are alone together they are given aphrodisiacs against their knowledge and they start making out and they nearly have sex before they realize that madame and some others are watching them and this is when we learn that madame does not want ryan to have sex with johns she wants her and gabriel to have sex in front of crowds why okay ryan is a pretty girl why don't you just sell her for sex the way you do for everyone else hell since she's a virgin you could probably charge extra as awful as that is to contemplate you could probably do that there really is no reason for this whole song and dance it's just happening because the author had no idea what to do so madame takes her on the ferris wheel and you know continues giving her a tour and tries to talk her into it and i mean putting on a live sex show sure that does make some sense i can see how that would make money at first i thought it was dumb that men would pay to be near a pretty girl and not have sex but then i remembered that only fans does exist and i don't know who needs to hear this but you're not actually chatting with her bro right now you are sexting with her assistant stop it it really just doesn't make sense for the madame to try and force someone to perform when they don't want to like just make her be a prostitute the way you've done two dozens if not hundreds of other girls like again the only reason this happens is because ryan is the protagonist and we don't want anything bad to happen to the protagonist because then the story might turn into one about trauma and how people respond to trauma and that might give ryan a personality that we can't have that plus if she loses her virginity she would no longer be pure please note the quotes around the word pure now the madame gives her some birth control pills and says she can't afford to give them to all of her girls because again they're they are illegal so they're very very expensive i don't know if it would be cheaper to have a bunch of kids running around but okay madame forces it into my mouth swallow she says her sharp painted fingernail gagging the back of my throat i struggle and jerk my head back and the pill has been swallowed before i can register what just happened it hurts going down is this a fetish thing because it feels like a fetish thing madame continues trying to force ryan to put on a sex show and ryan continues to refuse but also feels like she has no choice and one day lilac makes her wear a sari while they're walking around you know the thing indian women wear sure okay she forces her to wear a sari i don't know why and madame introduces her to a gatherer who is trying to buy her i i thought she wanted ryan to you know put on a show be sure whatever now now she wants to sell her to this gatherer guy i should now introduce you to a man who lives at this carnival named jared he's seemingly the only adult man around so he's de facto in charge of security which means you know prevent the clients from hurting any of the girls too badly not prevent them from hurting them but just prevent them from hurting them too badly and he's also in charge of maintaining equipment and he seems to be in a relationship with lilac his name is jared now jared is present at this that's why i'm bringing him up now so the haggling for the gatherer buying ryan starts to get out of hand and so jared and the gatherer both pull guns and they shoot at each other the gatherer is killed and jared is shot in the arm but is otherwise okay now madame starts hitting him in anger and nearby is maddie lilac's toddler daughter who i should mention is somehow mentally disabled we don't know exactly how but she is somehow mentally disabled and she's really really attached to jared and so when madame starts hitting him she flies into a rage and attacks her and then madame starts savagely beating her for a while and then others pull her off and then ryan and gabriel grab maddie and get her out of there they run her outside the carnival and they start treating her injuries and then ryan goes back in for gabriel and thinks now is the time to run and then gets caught immediately and then gets drugged because she's a dumbass and then later she's awoken and she's told hey vaughn is here he found you somehow and he's looking for you and she prepares to run off now lilac in a desperate attempt to give any character in this book any sort of depth or complexity at all she mentions that long ago madame's daughter was dating a respected doc doctor but she got killed in a pro naturalist riot which i guess is supposed to make her sympathetic but it just it's just so out of nowhere and so last minute that it doesn't and so anyways jared maddie lilac ryan and gabriel all come together and they all run and as they're running they hear vaughn calling out for ryan and he tells her just come home and you'll be safe all will be forgiven and she runs anyways and uh maddie ryan and gabriel climb the fence and run off but as lilac is climbing the fence it electrocutes her i guess that they just turned it on at the most dramatic moment and so she's unable to escape the carnival and jared decides to stay behind with her as well so ryan and gabriel just take maddie and they run off once again their escape plan is literally just run off there's no there's no complexity or anything there and if you thought that the bulk of this book would be at the carnival i don't blame you that's also what i thought but we are only about one third of the way through right now so they run for a while and they find a fortune teller named anabelle and they trade her some strawberries to let them stay and give maddie some painkillers and some medications you know help her with her injuries and anabelle gives ryan a tarot reading this leads nowhere uh gabriel is taking more painkillers that it's referred to as angels blood specifically and it's starting to affect him pretty badly this also leads nowhere and then they set off on foot and after a while they see a delivery truck which is heading to pennsylvania so pretty close to where they're going so they jump on and hide in the back and while they're hiding in the back ryan has some flashbacks to when she was kidnapped you know being in the back of a truck is reminding her of when she was in the dark for several days with all those other girls and then all the other girls were shot and apparently this is just triggering her flashbacks so she starts freaking out a bit gabriel tries to calm her and he does so by saying she's the smartest person he's ever met based on what her stellar ability to disguise herself and if you're thinking that ryan will be dealing with any sort of trauma or ptsd from her kidnapping or seeing others murdered don't worry she won't it only affects her in this one scene so then gabriel starts going into withdrawals because again he doesn't have enough painkillers and he says that before jenna died they spoke about how ryan is super important and doesn't realize it and then the truck reaches virginia and they get out they were heading to pennsylvania pennsylvania is closer to where they need to go why why why did they get out now i don't know but they find a restaurant and the owners agree to let them stay with them for the nights like they live on the floor above the restaurant and gabriel tells ryan that jenna knew vaughn was going to kill her so like jenna had just kind of accepted her fate basically why she didn't let ryan in on this i'm not sure but then in the middle of the night ryan goes to get a glass of water and runs into the owner of the house whose name is gregg now gregg is drunk and rambles about his dead son for a while and then he forcibly kisses her and attempts to sexually assault her but then gabriel comes along knocks him unconscious and the matty ryan and gabriel awfully but matty also runs off into the night and they aren't able to find her and gabriel also stole a bunch of this married couple's money again he didn't steal from the evil scientist mansion he didn't steal from the sex slave carnival but he is stealing from the small business owners it's nice to see where his priorities lay like i don't feel that bad for gregg again that guy was an attempted rapist but his wife didn't do anything but this is when gabriel says hey we stole some money it should be enough for bus fare again they should have just done that earlier but whatever now they find matty it doesn't take anything for them to do it they just they just find her they go to a bus station buy some tickets and then wait for a while and ryan breaks down in tears from the trauma of nearly being sexually assaulted understandable but again it never ever comes back so they take a bus to new jersey and then they decide to stay a night in the motel and you might think that something happens there but no nothing happens nothing happens at all in any of these freaking books i i i would say that about all this whole series just nothing happens there's a setup for things that happen there's a set up for things to happen and then nothing happens i'm not redoing that take just i'm annoyed okay so the next morning they look around and they see the statue of liberty across the water so like they're they're right there they're right next to new york and so they literally just walk to ryan's house and it's gone it's been burned down likewise her brother roan is nowhere to be seen and it looks like he burned his writings at some point and there's only a small scrap left crossbred flowers psyllium egg shells and chloroform my sister's ideas greenhouse gases my mother's hands 100 days but still no sign so yeah roan was writing something but it's it's uh it's all gone now and ryan thinks about how her mother said she's stronger than her brother in important ways when like back when they were kids her mother said that to her because main character worship i guess and they look around for clues as to roan's whereabouts they see dozens of dead rats in the basement they've been poisoned and in the backyard there is a trunk full of some valuable stuff that ryan and roan had buried there and then they dig it up and some of it most notably some seeds that their mother had as well as their parents notebooks with all their notes from their experiments are missing so basically they conclude that roan took some stuff and left because he thinks that ryan is dead the president is in town his name is president guilt tree i mean he's really only in this one scene in the story and he's mentioned a few other times but he's only in this one scene and so they go see him give a speech he has nine wives that's not relevant but i wanted to bring it up we also learn that the presidency is hereditary and you might think that again the president is relevant at some point but he's not so he announces that they are rebuilding the laboratories that were bombed you know the laboratory where ryan and roan's parents worked specifically and people are mad about this because conflict you know force contrived conflict is the best kind people don't want to find a cure because the author couldn't think of an actual reason for people to hate each other so some small bombs go off in the audience and then ryan roan and matty all flee considering that the president is here there's some really shitty security at this event i gotta say so they go to an orphanage and find a woman there whose name is claire and we find out that claire is lilac's mother also lilac's real name is grace now how did they find this orphanage well because matty has a children's book that they've read to her a couple times and it has a manhattan address written in it so they just went to the address and like oh look it's matty's grandmother sure so claire lets them stay she explains that lilac slash grace was kidnapped years ago and there's also a boy there whose name is sylas now sylas is about ryan's age he's only in this book for a little bit and he's not in the sequel at all but he's also kind of a love interest for ryan and he knew lilac when they were kids and you know what he is going to be represented by this orange cat because it doesn't fucking matter what i put there so ryan goes looking for clues to find her brother for the first time in this entire series she tries being a little bit proactive she tries actually doing something instead of sitting around and going wow i wish i could find my brother maybe he'll just fucking stumble across me so she goes around asking at factories where he may have worked and eventually she meets one man who angrily tells her that roan stole a delivery truck and drove off several months ago so that's all she has to go off of now ryan is also seemingly getting sick with the virus which is weird because she's only 17 and like her and gabriel have been pretending to be married this whole time like ryan is still wearing her wedding ring from when she was with linden and one day sylas realizes that the two of them aren't married how how do i explain it he says it's like there's an invisible cord on that wedding band and it doesn't lead to him it's like you're tethered wow author that sure is a weird way of saying that you wanted to put in a love triangle but you didn't want to put in any fucking effort so sylas and ryan find a dead girl in a ditch and ryan thinks oh that should have been me like for some reason she just thinks that you could maybe say it's survivor's guilt because of you know jenna or the girls in the truck but this has never come up before and it never comes up after so she says she'll look for her brother when she starts feeling better but then for a while she starts getting sicker and sicker and she she can barely get out of bed and she realizes while she's sick laying in bed she realizes the mansion was bad because it was a golden cage that she had no freedom she was only there to be intimate both physically and emotionally with linden didn't she figure that out before no really i'm not trying to be snarky or sarcastic or anything didn't she already know that isn't that why she escaped or i refuse to say escaped escaped implies that there were obstacles isn't that why she ran off so they look through some medical books to try and figure out what's wrong with ryan because it couldn't possibly be the virus and they get nowhere and gabriel suggests going back to vaughn to see what he did but ryan just refuses it's a moot point though because vaughn shows up at the orphanage very quickly right after that and he taunts her for a little bit and he reveals that the the wives all had these candies that they ate with their breakfast every morning and he mentions that they had some chemicals in them you know the chemicals from his chemical guard but ryan had become dependent on the chemicals and now she's going into withdrawals and the withdrawal symptoms are just similar to how the virus killed people and that's actually how he killed jenna he just took that away from her i'm proud of it vaughn says the concept is quite primitive to prevent contraction of the flu one would receive a flu shot which is in fact a small dose of the flu itself and so my thinking was simple replicate the symptoms of the virus and then administer them slowly over several years until the body works up an immunity that is not how vaccination works like you literally just described it dude you give them a small dose of the virus and then your body becomes used to it you're not giving them the virus you're just having them be hit with the symptoms so they wouldn't develop any sort of immunity and again as we learn later it's not a virus at all it's a genetic disease so this wouldn't do anything no matter what vaughn you're supposed to be a doctor so vaughn tells her to get in his car and he'll drive her back to florida and if she doesn't do it then she'll die and he'll kill everyone in the orphanage and so she agrees to it she gets in his car and then she throws up and then passes out and wakes up back in the mansion ryan actually seems to pass out and wake up in other locations a lot in this series but okay whatever she wakes up back in the mansion she's in a hospital bed and she is restrained understandable she did run off once before now dear tree is there and she looks very ill and apparently vaughn is trying to make it so that girls can carry pregnancies before natural puberty sure sure and it doesn't work very well so the girls including dear dear tree who is one of his test subjects they keep having miscarriages she's 10 years old okay just i i need to say 10 year old girls their their bodies aren't developed enough to properly carry a pregnancy even if they're technically able to it's really bad for them they're too small it could kill them just just throwing that out there now sesaly appears and then tells her that she will help her escape she's also pregnant again and it turns out that before the wedding the doctor that you know inspected them he actually implanted a tracker in them you know all of them it was right under the skin of their thigh which is that's how vaughn found ryan you think he would have found her sooner if he had the tracker but okay sure whatever now vaughn tells her because again she's the main character she has to be special he tells her she has genetic mosaicism which means she has two sets of cells which is why she has heterochromia now this is happening over the course of days or weeks but ryan is drugged up in bed for all of it and there's a scene where vaughn needs to take some samples so he just shoves a needle in both of her eyes that that was unpleasant but it was unpleasant on purpose so i suppose i can't really criticize it and finally 90 of the way through the second book ryan does something she finally does something she takes action on her own and she decides that she'll never be able to go home but she refuses to be an experiment so she gets out of bed and she tries to cut the tracker out of her thigh and then sesaly and linden find her now linden didn't know she was there and is actually mad at his father for hiding it from him and then he takes her to a different hospital and they remove the tracker and she explains that yeah i ran away from you and linden is hurt by this because i guess he couldn't figure it out sooner and ryan is also super sad that he's sad because again she loves him now for some reason gone are my days of taking his love for granted there is emptiness where that love once thrived i was wrong about linden's abandoning me he wouldn't have given me to his father to be a guinea pig but that's because he's kind and compassionate and not at all because he has any love for me oh shut up remember when he impregnated a 13 year old girl this is really the dumbest love triangle of all time i swear to god well i guess that's technically a love septagon because we have linden we have his four wives and then we have sylas and we have gabriel so i i guess yeah altogether there are seven people now they're talking and he says he's upset and he asks if she knows what it's like to lose someone that you love and she replies quote i lost everyone i loved the day i met you which is like a reasonable thing to say given the circumstances but he's still a love interest of hers so like i the author really couldn't decide if ryan loved linden or not so she finally tells him that she didn't become his wife willingly that vaughn killed jenna and that he killed rose and linden's daughter and that rose's body is in the basement and linden is a sad boy about it for a few minutes and then he leaves and when he leaves ryan turns the tv on is watching the news so some pro naturalists are mad about the attempts at a cure and are being interviewed at a demonstration and one of the people being interviewed is roan and ryan's like holy shit that's my brother and then the book ends and that's i'm not gonna lie it's actually not a bad cliffhanger so book three sever starts off with a bang we get a revelation that roan bombed a hospital and killed a bunch of people inside because it was pro science immediately i hate this guy and now you know why he's being played by osama bin laden like he's he's just a terrorist he's literally just a terrorist ryan's brother is a terrorist now ryan resolves to leave the mansion and find her brother like she later admits that she doesn't actually care about the terrorist thing like her brother is all she has and she loves him i'm no one to judge there is no number of buildings my brother can destroy and no number of lives he can claim that would undo my love for him honestly that is a pretty good moment of development for ryan it's just not focused on nearly enough to really make a difference like honestly this could have been its own book like trying to reach a loved one who's gone off the deep end and try and reconcile how you feel about them with their actions especially if those actions are particularly heinous but no one is really upset at roan for being a terrorist more on that later but like no one is upset at him for being a terrorist so ryan refusing to give up on on her brother kind of falls flat like i don't know i i guess the chemicals that she was in withdrawal for earlier are no longer a concern because her linden and sesaly all just leave the mansion and if you're wondering well wait where did they go well they went to linden's uncle's house because he lives nearby vaughn doesn't try to stop him he just sort of lets them leave uh anyways linden's uncle vaughn's brother is named reed he is a scientist just like his brother but he's also kind of a weirdo prepper-prepper conspiracy theorist type which i guess is kind of understandable here like given the way the world is so ryan lives kind of out in the sticks far away from anyone and he never ever talks to his brother but he does still love and care about linden and so he welcomes the three of them into his house now ryan and sesaly do take some time to apologize to each other like specifically apologizing to each other about the death of jenna because sesaly apologizes for being naive she says that she liked it at the mansion because it was better than what she had before and she didn't think that telling vaughn about the escape would get jenna killed and ryan apologizes for treating her badly afterwards you know because again sesaly was a literal child who had been she'd been going through some shit let's say and she really didn't know any better like they both acted understandably you know sesaly being naive and kind of stupid and ryan blowing up at her for it they both acted understandably it was a difficult situation and they've both grown a bit this is actually kind of a nice scene later vaughn comes back and then he takes sesaly back home because she wanted to stay but her son is back at the mansion why she didn't take her son with her i don't know linden also goes with her so ryan is now alone with reed and reed says that the rest of the world is still there it's not destroyed like the government tells them and she's like wow what a weirdo and a few days past like this reed has a plane out in his shed they don't do anything with it he just says it's there and also ryan does not do anything to try and find roan you know it's similar to when she wanted to escape in the first book she just kind of thinks about her goal sometimes she doesn't take any steps at all to reach it like she doesn't listen to the news and map out his attacks to predict his next move she doesn't think of how to contact him she doesn't wonder why he's doing this and try to think of ways to get him to stop she just thinks man i want to find my brother maybe he'll stumble into my lap i guess i don't know so linden does come back and he tells ryan hey i'm gonna help you out just don't run off on your own and we learned that reed left vaughn's house and doesn't talk to him anymore because he thought he was experimenting on linden which i don't believe is ever confirmed but it also wouldn't at all be weird again remember he's trying desperately to find a cure for his son now linden and sesally and baby bowen all visit and ryan and linden talk about what's happened a bit and uh again i have to mention she's kept her wedding ring on this entire time why she is still attached to this guy for no reason she has no reason to love him or even like him just sell the ring or throw it away it's a symbol of kidnapping but anyways uh linden takes the ring off and then says that their marriage is now annulled i'm not sure about the legality of that but sure whatever they are on good terms like at this point forward they are on good terms they are friends but they officially do not love each other they do not have romantic feelings now sesally has some really severe stomach pains so they just drive her to a nearby hospital and then she winds up living but she does have a miscarriage so that's that's unfortunate for her she wakes up the next morning and then says we're bad we're condemning children to this world because you know emo stuff i guess uh also ryan still kind of loves linden and is jealous of sesally in this one scene she forgets about it later van shows up and they think he had something to do with the miscarriage but that's never confirmed i don't think and then they leave for reid's house and linden finally admits his father is evil i don't know why it took him this long but sure he he finally admits his father was evil and then he says oh yeah okay ryan for real i will help you find roan and gabriel like i will do that for you to be honest i forgot gabriel existed because ryan doesn't seem to care about him i know it isn't my place to ask what's gone on between the two of you linden says even before the annulment i see now that i was wrong to expect all of your affections to be for me it wasn't wrong of you i say we were married oh shut up dumbass he's giving you an out now he offers to teach ryan how to drive but she says she already knows how because her brother taught her on his work truck sure a little bit later they're listening to a radio broadcast and it's doing a broadcast all about van and it mentions that ryan's parents were super important great researchers and then it explains that van is trying to follow in their footsteps and it says essentially he's trying to give somebody a little bit of the virus to make them immune to the virus and yes that is literally the process of vaccination like you described what a vaccine is by the time this book takes place the process has been around for hundreds of years it's not exactly cutting edge anyways roan is going around and he's actually announcing giving speeches and stuff about how he was the son of those really important researchers we mentioned earlier and people are skeptical for some reason and this is when we learn that ryan and roan's parents actually ran a bunch of nurseries for experiments where they were you know experimenting on kids and young adults and stuff trying to find a cure for the virus and they called it the chemical garden project i guess we had to squeeze that in somewhere and another broadcast right afterwards says that roan has done another bombing at a hospital and he killed 14 people and injured a bunch more like he's all upset about the experiments and he says the experiments are more dangerous than the virus because he's a dumbass i guess like okay i will grant him that the morality of these experiments is sometimes questionable but it's not worse than a 100 kill rate like also he's on the same side as the pro naturalists like they're the ones that killed his parents you'd think that would come up at some point you know maybe he would be a little hesitant about working with them or eventually decide that killing his parents was actually the right thing to do but we just we just never acknowledge that he's working with the same organization or not organization but the same movement that killed his parents but sure whatever so reed actually knows the guy who runs this radio station so they go to see what he knows and this is the point where i have to mention that roan a literal terrorist who has blown up multiple hospitals and has a body count is not being pursued by cops tell me why okay even if the police no longer exist we do get confirmation in this series that private security forces exist or there would be vigilantes who would be upset about von killing people or maybe a bounty would be offered so that people would go after him you know like the president or rich people who own the labs would want this guy gone because he is a threat to them but he's not in hiding he's like out in the open giving interviews and giving speeches and shit and no one's trying to find him that's just that that is probably the dumbest but also funniest thing in this entire series so yeah they go to the radio station owner and his name is edger and they he shows them a tape of roan just giving a speech again it's like in public there's a crowd watching him there's no cops or soldiers or anything and roan in his speech says that he's pretty sure ryan is dead and he thinks that the virus is better than trying to cure it now why he thinks that she was killed in experiments instead of being taken by gatherers and just either killed or sold as a prostitute somewhere i'm not sure exactly why he thinks that i mean i mean later we learned that somebody told him she was killed in experiments but he has no real reason to believe that so whatever anyways edger says that von probably spread the rumor that people are being killed in experiments because he wants to be the one to find the cure like he thinks terrorists will go after the other labs and then that will leave von with zero competition so he's the one who gets to find the cure even though i'm pretty sure the terrorists would wind up targeting von as well but whatever now all that said i can see how roan losing his sister might radicalize him and cause him to act irrationally like again he's with siding with the people who killed his parents so you'd think that would you know make him be conflicted because if the pro-science side killed his sister and the pro-naturalist killed his parents that he should have some weird feelings about that but okay whatever i can get how it would radicalize him and cause him to not act totally rationally and he also is in charleston so they decide okay we're gonna go off and find him in charleston now read show sessily how to use a gun out in his backyard and ryan actually mentions that her brother used to grease the barrel of his shotgun to make it louder and deter people from coming to their house greasing the barrel of a gun is not how that okay fuck it now linden sees sessily learning how to use a gun and is upset at her for holding one because it's dangerous and he tries to tell read how dare you show my wife how to shoot a gun you're terrible and then read shoots a his gun into the air to assert dominance and they start yelling at each other and then vaughn shows up and ryan hides from him for some reason and then they pack up and leave and read doesn't come with them like ryan and some others it doesn't even matter anymore just decide okay we're going to charleston to find my brother notice again how things are just happening so yeah linden sessily ryan they just drive to charleston and apparently that's also where the carnival that they were at in the last book is and ryan tells them about it and what happened and they just drive past now vaughn sends out a message on the radio saying he's looking for linden i guess sessily disabled or took out her tracker at some point but whatever and they go to the remains of the hospital that roan recently blew up and ryan thinks about how her brother was there and she misses him she doesn't think at all about how he murdered a bunch of people you'd think that would cross her mind but whatever so some nearby people recognize them and apparently vaughn has offered a bounty for their capture so they kidnap them and they bring them to the carnival and then the madame is there she meets them she explains that she actually knows vaughn and met linden when he was really really young she also reveals that she was rose's mother you remember rose linden's first wife who died way back in the first book like yeah apparently rose thought both of her parents died in a car bombing but her parents thought that rose died in that same car bombing like vaughn just lied to both of them because he thought that that would make rose think she didn't have a family so she wouldn't run away and also would mean that her parents didn't come looking for her so after realizing all that madame is now on their side and she wants revenge on vaughn so jared drives them to another scarlet district another carnival brothel which is owned by the madame and happens to be nearby and the nearest research lab is called lexington and ryan thinks it'll be roan's next target so she resolves to go there so ryan and jared go there they leave sesaly and linden behind at the scarlet district for whatever reason and when they get there ryan describes that like oh the town is really run down and then this line comes up the president will fund these establishments but not defend them from threats like my brother oh shut up just not ryan the book just just shut up you're not making any sense anymore so ryan and jared find a makeshift stage where a crowd has gathered to listen to roan make a speech like again there's no cops no military nothing he's just a terrorist whose identity and face are known and he's just in public giving speeches about why it's great that he's a terrorist uh roan speaks briefly uh off in the distance the bomb goes off and destroys the lab and then the crowd celebrates and ryan finally announces herself she goes like hey roan i'm here i'm alive and roan is really really shocked to see her but he's also very very happy and so he she sends jared to go back home and then she goes off with her brother and some others and while this is happening roan again very excited to see her tells her that a doctor told him that she was dead and encouraged him to blow up the labs he also in this one scene he has a girlfriend whose name is b and i have to mention her but she never ever comes back after this like she was briefly mentioned a few times before this like she didn't get a name but ryan noticed that there was a girl always standing near roan when he was on the news and like she just she just wasn't important enough to feature in the rest of the book now roan does not seem suspicious or upset when he figures out that vaughn lied to him like he finds out vaughn told him his sister had been killed in experiments and he just goes oh well vaughn must have had his reasons for lying brah that that's all i can say brah so roan takes ryan to vaughn and then vaughn gets them in a limo and they drive off ryan just goes along with this she doesn't object or try to escape or anything she just she goes along with this and this is when roan learns that the two of them know each other and he's surprised and vaughn just straight up says that he kidnapped her because she had heterochromia and that means she was special and the entire time while he's telling roan about this ryan doesn't like interrupt him or say anything she could easily tell roan not to trust him and go on about the abuse she faced and how he killed her sister wives but you know that's that's uh you know she doesn't say anything roan hates the science experiments and ryan went through some you know most notably the needle in her eye so he might be kind of upset about this guy subjecting his sister to those science experiments but again i guess ryan would rather be a passive observer in her own fucking book so vaughn takes them to a private jet and then they fly off to hawaii which was supposedly destroyed but apparently is not and on the way vaughn tells them a story about the world and we learn here through this weird exposition dump that the american government banned a lot of stuff that caused diseases you know they banned certain chemicals they banned tanning beds presumably they also banned cigarettes but they don't specify and the country just got cut off from the rest of the world they shut down internet and other communication and so again the united states is just completely isolated and eventually they genetically modified people to make the first generation like vaughn and then the virus appeared and everything collapsed and roan knows all of this and he's still not suspicious he's not acting protective of his sister at all which again very very strange like do you remember when he let a child freeze to death on their front porch to keep her and himself safe or when he killed the gatherer who came to their basement with no hesitation or when he blew up hospitals as revenge for her supposed death like he's not acting protective of her anymore uh also ryan is apparently unimportant to all of this all this time during which vaughn didn't tell roan and me about each other had nothing to do with me i realized i was just something to keep his son occupied and another body to experiment with roan had the brains vaughn needed and roan never would have cooperated if he thought i was alive he would have been too busy worrying about me uh i don't think anyone involved in this book understands what vaughn's evil plan even was when they arrive in hawaii they see a woman who is definitely older than 20 but also definitely younger than the first generation and vaughn claims that people here don't have the virus they've never even heard of it so uh like again the rest of the world outside of america is perfectly fine that's just a thing that is revealed right now now roan is undergoing experiments of some sort just vague science-y stuff happening in his uh in his vicinity and uh vaughn goes on about rose and her parents for a while they were always out there her parents they lived like gypsies rather than civilized professionals boy that sure is an interesting line and not at all extremely fucking racist this is where we get the confirmation from vaughn that rose lived several months after her 20th birthday due to his treatments uh because he says that there are several cures for the virus again virus it's not actually a virus uh there are several cures but none of them are universal they don't work for everybody they only work sometimes and so he's doing more experiments and trying to find a proper one and also roan and ryan are special somehow their parents made them for a purpose i guess they were like genetically modified before birth this part of the book has a lot of exposition and a lot of retconning in it's like we learn the virus in males and the virus in females are completely unrelated sure again doesn't lead anywhere but sure uh roan shows ryan their parents notebooks and does confirm that they were in fact experiments and so they leave hawaii and they go back to vaughn's estate in florida and gabriel is there remember him yeah he exists uh he's in an induced coma and vaughn tells ryan to bring linden back or he will never wake gabriel up he will stay that way for the rest of his life so ryan goes back to uh linden and cesilia at the scarlet district and then they go to reed's house to pick up bowen because he's just been chilling there the whole time and while they're there reed decides to demolish his shed and display the plane that was in there and he wants to fly it he's like yeah come on guys let's go for a ride so they'll they'll do they get in and they fly for a bit and when they land it's it's a rough landing and so linden actually smacks his head on the dashboard really really hard and he starts bleeding and they're like hey man are you all right and then he has a seizure and vaughn is there so he throws him in the back of his car and drives off with him and on the way to their mansion where he could get medical treatment linden dies like yeah for real he dies ryan and cesilia are just devastated by this so they go back to the wives floor and then they bury linden and vaughn brings ryan to hawaii for some more experiments and then she's unconscious for a week and then she wakes up after a week and then rowan says now there's a universal cure that was very quick number one and number two it required zero work from the protagonist isn't that fucking nice and ryan is all sad and says oh i don't care again why did she love linden i don't know but she did and then they immediately go back to florida there was uh there was no purpose to their trip to hawaii but they they immediately go back to florida and cesilia becomes convinced that vaughn is going to kill her i don't know why she thinks that but she thinks that so ryan sees vaughn at linden's grave one night and she feels really bad for him and to be honest so did i you know like he did a lot of horrible shit trying to find the cure but he was doing it to save his son's life and he had already lost one child a long time ago and now he lost this other one despite all his efforts to save him so like this is the one moment where i really did feel a lot of sympathy for him even though he was a horrible person and so ryan asks him why he killed rosa's baby and he does confirm that yes he did kill rosa's baby it wasn't strangled by the umbilical cord he says that the baby was malformed and he thought that she would die after linden got attached to her so he killed her right away to prevent him from getting hurt and he also confirms that jenna was infertile so he did experiments which killed her which we already knew that but okay like you know remember i mentioned jenna had scar tissue in her uterus like this is where we learned it this late in the series and then sesaly steps out of the shadows and shoots vaughn like she shoots him and he is also dead now apparently she got a gun from madame for exactly this purpose and she says that she did it because vaughn killed jenna but hearing about rosa's baby is what pushed her over the edge so i imagine that this whole time she's like been trying to hype herself up to do it because like yes this bastard killed jenna but she couldn't bring herself to do it but then she heard about rosa's baby and that that pushed her over the edge so they wipe the fingerprints off the gun and then leave it there and then just go back to the house and then later they pretend that they know nothing about what happened okay but i'm not sure why they're trying to hide the murder because you don't need to cover up your crimes in this world you could literally give a speech about how you murdered him and no one will arrest you remember so the next day the other servants all see that vaughn is dead which means that linden is the owner of the house now except linden is dead so now reed is the owner of the house so they wake up gabriel from his induced coma and they let reed come back and then that's kind of the end of everything like they continue the medical study like some other people get the cure and it works and then ryan and roan and other people who get the cure get flown out to hawaii once a month for follow-up tests to again make sure that everything works out and roan understands why they killed vaughn like ryan and sesley tell him i guess but he's also upset because vaughn did create the cure and therefore saved all of their lives which is not not wrong you know he's not wrong when he says that because vaughn did some nasty shit but he did save literally millions of lives and a better book series would probably explore that you know people aren't just good or bad we all contain multitudes but sure you know that happens and then a lot of time passes and ryan turns 21 years old and is okay so that confirms yeah the cure worked at least for her and it seems like lilac and jared go to manhattan to be with her mother and with maddie uh and we hear nothing about silas but you know he's not important i guess and then it ends with a few pages of them just waxing poetic about how they'll keep the memories of those they lost alive and then one day they'll go out there and explore the world in linden's memory and that's it like that that's the end of the series the last book series i did this with was red queen and while those books are bad and dumb and have long stretches of boring nonsense things did happen and i was into some of those things i was interested in some of them like there were villains with clear goals there were heroes with clear goals and they fought each other the chemical garden doesn't even have that you know like that there's no actual story here there is a plot in that there are events that occur but those events don't mean anything and they don't really tie together in any real way the inciting incident is that rinne is kidnapped and then sold to someone and forced to marry him then what you know like the there are events that happen but like what's the story actually about it's not about her trying to escape it's not about her falling in love with linden or gabriel because her falling in love with gabriel just takes so little freaking time it's not about her trying to find a cure because that just sort of happens around her so what's this series about it's hard to say the only definable theme i can find here is that human trafficking is bad which is true but it's also not exactly revolutionary you know just saying human trafficking is bad you're not going to get a lot of people that disagree with you and what's the conflict here you know what is the thing people are fighting over there's several really first there's escape the mansion then escape the carnival then reach manhattan then find roan and then after she finds roan i'm not even sure what the final conflict of the series is you know after she finds roan just sort of things happen and then the world is saved you know the only real through line here is vaughn as the villain but he always seems off to the side you know you ever notice how everything bad that vaughn does in book one is just conjecture like in the first book we don't get any confirmation of him doing things like poisoning jenna we do get confirmation later but that's after he's established as the villain you know vaughn had other labs destroyed and scientists killed so that he could be the one to create the cure which implies that he's doing it out of ego like he wants to be the one to save the world or maybe he's doing it out of greed because you know he'd probably make a lot of money from selling the cure or maybe both but then ryan also claims that he did everything to save linden because he also he already lost one child and i mean if they focused on that we could have had a very very sympathetic villain but his motivation is just so scattered that we don't even have that you know honestly looking back on the series i feel like vaughn should have been ryan's husband rather than linden you know he should have married her at the start of the first book he's not a young hot dude so she's kind of sneezed out by him rather than with linden where she's like oh he's so cute and nice and then vaughn as her husband mistreats her and so she decides to run and the rest of the story unfolds like that's the only way i can think of for him to feel like an actual villain rather than someone who just appears once in a while when conflict is needed and ryan is never abused by her husband linden in these books which you know good for her but it also prevents most of the threats that are posed in this story from seeming real it makes her seem like oh she's just special just because you know the story's about her therefore she's special so this dark and gritty world feels much less dark and gritty because nothing bad ever really happens to the main character she never seems like she's under threat the best way i can think of to fix this series really the only way i can think of is in addition to you know vaughn being ryan's husband just have the first book be about her escaping the mansion you know have her come up with a plan work towards executing it run into trouble along the way you know first she needs to find a way off the wives floor then after that she needs to find the exit gate then she needs to think of a way through the exit gate then she needs transport home etc like these are all problems these are all obstacles that she would run into and she would have to find a way to fix them like i'll admit while i was reading these books i was watching the show prison break and that's an example of that type of plot done really well like check out that show if you're looking for inspiration about how to write any sort of escape story ryan also would have had to go through actual suffering in a better version of the story like not necessarily getting sexually assaulted but at least have the threat there because she really just chills for the entire first book or maybe part of the conflict could be that ryan realizes yeah she's a prisoner here but she's been inducted into the ruling class of this world you know she is safe she is well fed she has luxuries that she couldn't have dreamed of before and in exchange for that she just has to have sex with her husband sometimes and then have a few kids and to somebody like ryan who lived her entire life under the threat of starvation or the threat of being kidnapped and either murdered or sold to a brothel like this might seem like a good deal to somebody who lived under that sort of threat you know and at the very least it would bring the world being horrible into focus and then book two would have to focus more on the sex carnival you know showcase just how bad the outside world is and why people like vaughn are willing to commit horrible crimes to try and fix the virus you know it would strain the relationship between ryan and gabriel or maybe in this version uh because she's married to vaughn she actually has a forbidden romance with linden and falls in love with him although she would technically be his stepmom in this scenario so maybe maybe don't think too hard about that but whatever you know it would strain her relationship with him a little bit there there'd be at least some conflict and then book three would be about the terrorism plotline you know go into detail about how roan and others began as normal kids but they were turned into monsters by the world they live in you know they they lost everything and then they lashed out maybe the climax is that they're about to bomb a lab that's working on the cure and ryan is able to talk them down from it like it this whole outline i'm giving is vagus fuck and would need a lot of flashing out but at least it's something man as for that whole thing with linden marrying and impregnating a 13 year old just jesus christ man jesus jesus fucking christ i can accept that that sort of thing would be more acceptable in their society than it is in our society but what really irks me is that the books don't dwell on how awful it would be for the person on the receiving end you know you can have a world with shitty aspects to it where the people there just think it's normal while still making it clear that it's shitty you know for example in the lightbringer books slavery is totally normal and it's common to the point where a lot of characters think that society would collapse without it like hero characters think that and it makes sense that they would see nothing wrong with it but we also see exactly how awful slaves are treated and we understand that yeah this world is shitty for a lot of the people that live in it this the chemical garden feels kind of like if somebody with zero awareness wrote lolita and that's that's not what a series should feel like ever and if i had to sum it up i would say that's what this whole series feels like you know it feels like it lacks self-awareness and it lacks identity because the books sold well you know many people read them yet no one seems to remember them no one ever talks about them they left nothing resembling any sort of cultural impact you know as far as i can tell there aren't any books that have been inspired by this to try and make something different or something better or even to try and cash in on its success you know red queen for all of its many many flaws it has left an impact on culture it inspired copycats people remember it people have fondness for it like a lot of people in the comment section for my video on it were saying something like yeah these books are trash but i liked them when i was younger you know i can't imagine many people doing anything like that for the chemical garden and that's the thing the chemical garden books have already faded from memory and when this video is done it's gonna fade even more like that's all there just there is nothing else to say here anyways uh my next very brief summary is going to be on the vampire academy books assuming that nothing changes and my next like super in-depth book review which will be before my very brief summary is going to be on the critical drinkers trash heap of a book that should be eventual it will be here eventually but thanks for watching this far this was longer than i intended but goodbye uh the patron names they're on screen right now my ten dollar and up patrons are aposavalanan olivia reyan brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay dan anceliovich dark king dio echo jalal dalool james m lexie delorm lyza rudikova lord tiebreaker michael and katey hake microphone mist boy mitzimona ruby reviews sad martigan psych xs cilia the vixen stone stairs toa michael tesla shark vavictus vimex zole and wesley all these people are great you can also see all the other names of other patrons on here so if you want your name on here and you also want like early access to videos um consider going over there donating if you don't feel like doing that you can also become a youtube channel member and you'll also get early access to videos doesn't that sound cool doesn't that sound awesome aren't you you're all cool goodbye