 Alright, so today we're going to talk about a book called A Walk Through Dreams. Now, I think that for what it sets out to do, this book accomplishes it extremely well. Like I think it does a very good job at that, but I'm not the biggest fan of everything that it was doing. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. The premise for this book is almost stupidly simple. It's alternate history and it's about, okay, what if there was this special type of red yam which grew in Australia, which I don't believe exists, and the natives, the Aborigines were able to find it, and through that they developed agriculture and then they developed like large cities and kingdoms and empires and such, and then later when they contact the Europeans and the rest of the world, like what happens then. And it kind of cuts off in like the mid 17th century actually because it's part of a series. But this is basically just almost like a textbook run over of everything from prehistory to that point. And while there are some points where it does get into prose and it has actual characters and stuff, for the most part it is just that. Now, I do believe that the Aborigines had some agriculture, like they weren't complete hunter-gatherers, but because of the way that the weather in Australia works, it's pretty much impossible to do sedentary stuff without some form of irrigation. And the book does go into some detail about how that worked out and how they were able to get around it and how there's still large parts of the continents which are desert so they can't do much with them. But basically it is just an overview of how all that happened and how they wind up getting to basically iron age levels of technology by the time they make contact with the Dutch. And well, that's kind of it. There's a lot of really interesting stuff in here is the thing. I myself am a fan of alternate history and I'm kind of glad that some of it's becoming more mainstream nowadays. I just wish that most of the mainstream people had more than two fucking ideas because it's always either, what if the Nazis won World War II or what if the Confederates won the American Civil War? And then they're just bringing it up to the board of directors or whatever while jerking off under the table. I just wish people were a little more creative or imaginative with their ideas, the points of divergence, and this is a very good point of divergence. Now I will say that there is a lot of technical talk in here about how certain plants work and how they grow and stuff, which is, I'll be honest, it bored me to tears. It was not good. It was terrible. And then same with when they talk about diseases because, you know, the aborigines having agriculture and stuff caused them to develop diseases, which then later infect the rest of the world, kind of the way that Europeans had smallpox, and then that hit the Australians and the Americas really, really bad. And so it's interesting to see that go both ways in this example, certainly. But again, just the technical talk about the viruses and everything, like not only did a lot of it go over my head, but it was just so bored. My eyes kept glazing over and I was like, this needs to just end. I'm bored. Now the thing about this book is that when you get to around two thirds in, that's where the Dutch contact happens. And after that, the book takes a pretty big decline in quality because the thing is up until that point, we had only had a few little brief interludes that were written as prose, like, oh, here is this king talking to his advisors, and it'll be like a short little interlude, and they're, they're not good. Like they're just, they're just not, okay? This writer is skilled at writing just a timeline and how it works out, which is how a lot of alternate history is written. And I think that's a fine way of doing it, but he's just not good at prose. And because a lot of times it's talking about like wars and battles and stuff, especially near the end, there's like a really big battle. And that's one of the last things that happened, but I could not give, give a shit because these are people we were just introduced to. We have no reason to care about them. We have no connection to them. If this was like a regular book where we're following them all the way through, then sure, maybe we could have done that. Maybe we could have gotten away with it. But as it stands, absolutely just the most boring parts of the book. And the last third after European contact is full of that stuff. Like it is just so full of it, like individual conversations, individual, well, not that many battles really, but just it's, it's really bad. And honestly, this book is pretty long as well. And had they cut out most of that or at least simplified most of that, it would have been a more tolerable length because as it is now, it's, it is a little repetitive, like not too repetitive, but honestly, there's just a lot of stuff in there. I don't care that much about. And I would rather they have just, okay, let, you know what? Let's go in there with a scalpel. This isn't really important. So we'll cut it. And I know that can be hard to do, but you got to do it sometimes. And frankly, I would rather that this book have just stuck to one style. So we're not going back and forth. Like if it had just been pros the whole way through, even if it wasn't particularly good, I would have at least gotten used to it. And had it just been like technical jargon the whole way through, I would have been fine with that the whole way through. But as it is, it's, um, it just feels awkward going back and forth. And that's about all I have to say here. This really isn't a complicated work. Well, I mean, it is kind of complicated because you can go into all of the stuff in there that has changed and how the author has very clearly researched this very well. And I think that's all super interesting. I am a fan of alternate history, but as I said, I don't like everything that this book was trying to do completely. And I think it succeeds very well at what it sets out to do, but could have been better, could have been better. And thanks to good stuff for for recommending this, for requesting it, whatever you want to tell me. But the point is short review, not allowed to say goodbye. All right, you know how this works by now. All the names on here are people that gave me money and the people that gave me $10 and more are Aposavalanian, Olivia Rayan, Ava Tumor, Brandon S. Pilcher, Brother Santotes, Christopher Quinten, Datboy805, Mbis, Pfizer, Jeremy Joel, Carcat Kitsune, Kevin Zhang, Liza Rudikova, Madison Lewis Bennett, Mel Austin, Microphone, Sad Martin, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, and Vaivictus. You guys are the best. If you want stuff like early access to my videos or just voting on future video topics, then consider sending me money. And if you don't want to do that, then become a YouTube channel member or just like this video, share it around and stuff. It really does help. And that's about everything I'm supposed to say here. So I'll see you later. Bye.