 who lordy how is How is this even possible like that? I've read bad books before But I don't believe I have ever read any that were quite this clumsy Like I I didn't even know it was Possible to do that. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long So I'm really not joking when I say that like this is not the worst book I've ever read I'll be clear on that from the beginning like I've read stuff that made me a lot angrier or stuff That was a lot stupider, but I have never read anything That's quite this poorly put together with the exception of maybe Reapers Creek Which remember is one of Onision's books like this is about on that level So just for context Fallen is a six-book long series, which I reviewed a while ago. You can check it out here and That entire series I used 282 tabs to get through like that's how many notes I had to make Zenith I used 304 This is one book. This is nuts. I have never in my life found something. That's this dense with just so many little inconsistencies and bad lines and bizarre character actions repetitions I Repetition is a big thing like there's so many parts where characters repeat old motivations or go over the same problems again Or we get a flashback which deals with the same stuff. We've already dealt with before. It's it's weird and Part of the reason why there's so many tabs here is that it's kind of bad in multiple ways at once like there will be sections that I'll go like four or five six pages even without putting a single tab down and then I'll have like five on one page because Well, there's just so much all at once like it'll be something that is kind of stupid in terms of foreshadowing and also kind of stupid in terms of Character motivation because it wouldn't make sense for them to do that and also kind of stupid in terms of the world structure and so It's layered is the thing. It's bad in layered ways Like an onion and the thing is reading this you can definitely tell it was written by two people because It feels Simultaneously unfocused and like it's going in different directions at the same time which I mean I guess that's just another way of being unfocused But whatever the point is it was written by booktubers Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings I don't actually know what their channels are called. I've never watched them or anything But I have to ask like How could people who like talk about books that much and presumably read a lot? How could they be this bad and How? Now I'll bring up real quick that two years ago when this book first came out It did get a lot of negative reviews for good reason. You'll see and there was some drama surrounding that I'm not going to talk about that because I don't care That's the main reason like I'm I'm a grown-ass man I don't give a shit about that sort of thing and also because I'm really not trying to attack the authors here Like their book is terrible, but I don't know them as people. They're probably perfectly nice and all that so just Let's focus on the book. I really don't want to get into anything else I Will say though that even if this isn't the worst book I've ever read It's the worst attempt at a space opera I have ever come across if you're unfamiliar space operas are essentially the science fiction equivalent of epic fantasy It's something that is really large in scale Usually has a large cast of characters There's usually the fate of the entire universe at at stake not necessarily but usually so You know, it's something big like that it if you like epic fantasy, you might also like space opera I don't know and this certainly tries to be that but It fails in every possible way. It's not the worst science fiction I've ever come across because as long as maximum ride forever exists. It's um, I Don't know if anything is gonna beat that one out, but hey, who knows but what's this book actually about? Well, it's about a fugitive mercenary by the name of Androma Rasella Also known as the Bloody Baroness who travels around Doing jobs with her crew aboard their ship called the Marauder One day Androma gets the opportunity to atone for her crimes and no longer be a fugitive and find the go-home and stop living this life So she agrees to do it They go off and do the job and then it pulls them into this much bigger conflict Which is the main story that sounds fine at first, but honestly the cracks begin to show before the book even really starts Because at the beginning of this book there is a map I'll see if I can find one to put up here a map of the Murabelle Galaxy Which is where everything takes place and I'm not opposed to having maps at the beginning of books In fact, I think it's usually a good thing Especially if it's a fantasy setting where there's you know It's a whole new world with a ton a ton of different countries and stuff But for sci-fi I'm not really sure what the point is like you can just say yeah We go to this planet or we go to this space station And really all you need to know is how far things are apart in relation to one another and showing the Murabelle Galaxy in this manner is Well all the systems are really closely jammed together, so we don't really get a sense of scale We don't see any Markings indicating like different countries or anything so we have no idea of the political situation We have no feeling on what the culture is like nothing like that In fact, I'm not even totally sure if it's our world in the future Which a lot of science fiction is in fact most science fiction is because for some reason It's just yeah at some point in the next couple hundred years people on earth get technology and go out and start colonizing stuff But sometimes Occasionally you will see something that is just a totally fictional made-up world kind of like a Star Wars You know it's it's space, but it has nothing to do with earth or humanity as we know it and so that this sort of thing like The map just does nothing for us like for example wheel of time when I first read the first book in the series I have the world I Opened it up looked at the map said wow this world was really big. I can see all these different countries I can see there's a bunch of areas that are not belonging to any country Which is kind of weird. I wonder what's going on there and then When we get introduced to the characters and where they live we realize man They really only know about this tiny tiny corner of the world and then as the story goes on We get to see more and more of it and then we realize like oh, okay This series is gonna be about us visiting all of these exotic locales. I'm kind of excited for that I'm sorry. My back is really hurting right now and out of all of the locales we see on this map of the mirror bell galaxy three of them matter to this book and Of those three, none of them are interesting. So Yikes now, I think that this is supposed to be our world in the future I don't think it's completely fictional fictional because they do mention the ancients coming along and first Colonizing the planets and terraforming them and stuff. So I Think that's what's going on But they never really make it clear and just overall this is a very very basic failure that Oh Lord, you know what? Let's let's just get started on the book itself. This is Zenith So we start off with a prologue Cell 306 the past endless darkness. It surrounded him in cell 306 Twisting and turning itself into his bones until he and the darkness became one So we're one sentence in and that's uh, that's kind of stupid Okay, so basically this is just a couple pages of a prologue It's this guy named Valen Cortes who is trapped in this cell. We don't know why he's there but we know the conditions are terrible and It's an okay idea for an opener, you know, it raises questions. It has a hook We're wondering well, how who is he how to get there, but it ends too soon We don't really know who Valen is what his relationship is with anything in this story All we know is that he's a person that exists and he's in this cell and It doesn't give us a chance to get attached or hooked into it really so It doesn't do anything so then we cut to the real beginning which is following the main character Androma and that also starts off stupid her nightmares were like bloodstains They were impossible to get rid of no matter how hard Androma Rosella tried to scrub them from her mind on the darkest nights They clung to her like a second skin in them She could hear the whispers of the dead threatening to drag her down to hell where she belonged But Andy had decided long ago that the nightmares were her punishment She was the bloody baroness after all and if surviving meant giving up sleep then she would bear the exhaustion Tonight the nightmares had come as they always had and now Andy sat on the bridge of her ship the Marauder Scratching a fresh set of tallies into her twin swords the glowing compression cuffs on her wrist Which protected skin burned in an accident years before were the only light in an otherwise dark space The press of a button was all it took to power them up. I feel like I should be listening to Lincoln Park while I read this So yeah Androma is like I said a mercenary on a ship. She has lived a very dark and edgy life so far and It's stupid to open up on a nightmare like that like Okay, we know it's not real. We don't really know this character. So we don't really care that much about her and Well, it's kind of hard to explain in too many words, but like it's just clumsy like I was saying earlier It's clumsy and from this point forward. We basically just get pages of exposition like the first 15 to 20 pages of this of the book are just being introduced to like the Marauder and its crew and Androma and Okay, like I said, it's clumsy. It's not very well put together But that would be forgivable because you know, it's the beginning of a book We have to be introduced to stuff but the main thing is that it says what is going on and what is happening, but it doesn't say why or how and Basically that robs it of all sorts of emotion and investment like We'll go into it a little more in a minute, but you know, it'll introduce you to characters Nobody like this is this person. They look like this. This is their backstory Okay Why am I supposed to care though, you know, it sucks away any sort of happiness or investment or sadness or anger or anything that we might feel so first up we have the ship the ship is called the Marauder and It's made of this material which looks like glass. So the ship is see-through. You can actually see in and out of it Which I think is a cool visual and it would also be cool to be on the inside of that because then you could look out and see The stars and shit while you're flying Other than that we get no description of what the ship is like. We don't know What how big it is. We don't know what shape it is. We don't know how many rooms there are We don't know what kind of rooms there are. We don't get a real description of what it looks like from the outside We don't get a real description of what it looks like on the inside Everything is just up to your imagination. You know, there's a there's a fine line between Giving the audience enough information that they can form a proper picture in their head and giving them too much information and not allowing them to Use any of their imagination at all and this one is definitely not giving enough information And then we get introduced to the crew who are all women I don't know if there's a real reason for them all being women. In fact, they're I don't think there is one at all It's just the authors felt like doing that which I Mean I guess this isn't a problem per se but like if you're gonna have a crew that all has something in common like that then Why not give us a real reason for it? Like it could tell us okay is their relationship to one another strictly professional or are they just friends that decided to shack up and start Wandering the galaxy together, which we learned that is the real reason for it But still if there was a reason for them all being women then I feel like they would mention that It's kind of like I don't know a better example of this sort of thing would be in an anime called Gundam iron-blooded orphans there is a main character who is a man who Runs a ship and all the rest of the crew are women and why that is is because they're all his wives He marries them because he finds them in shitty conditions like they're poor or something and then he marries them So that they can have a better life and they're also safe from like criminals and stuff So okay, that's kind of stupid, but it is at least a reason or something like in the expanse Kamina drummers OPA faction are led by a polyamorous Couple or not couple, but it's six people all in a polyamorous relationship including drummer herself and like Okay, that's that's kind of interesting. It doesn't change all that much about the story but at least it gives you an idea of like okay, this is their relationship with one another and We kind of lose that opportunity here, and we also learn that androma is called the bloody baroness Why is she called the bloody baroness? Because she kills a lot of people I guess I don't know like there's no specific story behind it so I'm not sure what the point is of even having her have that nickname just because it sounds cool I guess and after that we meet the crew we meet Lyra who is a pilot and She has glowing scales all over her body because the planet She's from got blasted with radiation a while ago, and it gave all the people scales One that's not how radiation works not not even kind of a little bit and two That actually brings up a bigger problem with the book in that There are no aliens or anything here, but all of the humans involved Have weird non-human features like some of them are have horns or they're covered in spikes So they have weird hair or eye or skin colors or they have scales or something like that and like why Like okay if you wanted to have people like that in here then just make it so that they're aliens or just make it So that they're humans who receive some sort of genetic modifications for some reason like Again, there's people in this who you know have scales or have webbed hands and feet and gills or something And part of the reason for that is that terraforming these planets was difficult on them So like maybe it would make sense for them to get genetically modified so that they can have a real chance of surviving there that would give a lot of information about the world right there and Not just be weird is the thing like it's not that stupid I guess is especially compared to some other stuff in here like this is soft science fiction It's fine for it to take a few leaps and logic like that, but It's it's just weird and doesn't really fit and After that we meet gilly gilly is 13 years old and has a hot trigger finger That is all we learn about her and then we meet Breck who is the head gunner on their ship I'm not sure exactly what that job entails other than occasionally. There's a battle. Okay, let's shoot stuff Couldn't the pilot do that or the captain or something? How many guns does this ship have again? We never really learned so it doesn't tell us anything Breck is also a seven foot tall woman because the planet that she comes from also got mutated so that they're also just really big and tall that's their mutation and She is an amnesiac That's that's about all we learn This is all given without any sort of fanfare. There's there's no emotion or anything like it genuinely feels like I was reading a Wikipedia article summary of what's going on on their ship and stuff like it's weird like the exact amount of emotion that I was giving you that's what we get from this and It kind of makes this book feel like it's either the second in a series or it's part of an already established universe like it feels like The audience should already be familiar with all of this. So They just say hey, here's a quick reminder and then we can move on like if this was a Star Wars book for instance, you wouldn't need to go into that much detail about like, okay What's a Jedi or something like that? because you're assuming that okay if the audience is picking this up and they already know and You're gonna see that a lot throughout the rest of the book There's a lot of stuff in here Which is just not properly explained and as such the world never gets any real character or dimension and After-Break, that's it. The whole crew is only four people which is really too small if I'm being honest like There's no chance to like get to know these people especially because it kind of just front-loads everything there and There's no chance to watch them really interact with one another. It's just nothing There's there's only those people to bit to be the crew And that's a shame because having a big crew full of a bunch of different people is part of what makes stuff like Firefly, Star Trek or Mass Effect work Like the crew all have unique personalities unique backstories and useful skills So you can understand why they why they keep them around You can see how they interact not just with the main character But with each other and you can see how they help or hinder the mission They all can have their own arcs and stuff like that And they all get their own moment to shine if you don't like one of them, then okay You can always focus on another one like there's a lot of Versatility and a lot of advantages to having a big crew which we completely miss out on not to mention that What exactly are the jobs people do here like okay? Lyra's a pilot that makes sense and then they basically just have three fighters like how complicated is it to really fire guns most of that should be Done by computer wouldn't it be I I don't know this setting doesn't really talk about that So what's Androma do she's the captain? Okay, she orders people around but How difficult is that really does like do they need a captain even I I mean I guess they they would but I Don't know like they don't have an engineer. They don't have a navigator. They don't have a rogue You know, they are criminals it might be useful to have someone who knows how to sneak around and pick locks and stuff but We don't have that We have we have nothing this crew is just four people who are not very useful to each other So basically the crew just goes off to find another job because they're like, okay, we're running low on fuel We don't have much money. Let's just head off somewhere. We'll see if we can find work And then Androma is awoken with more nightmares. Like I said, it's a very dumb Unsubtle way of showing that she's in distress because we know it's fake You know, you can start off with like three paragraphs of italics. It's like yes, this is a dream and We all know it's going to end with something bad happened and then she woke up in a cold sweat it's it's dumb it's fake it has no tension and The fact that it's repeated so much makes it so much worse because not only does Androma have a shitload like an absolute shitload of these stupid nightmares, but Other characters do too and every time it happens. It's really annoying and obnoxious and anyways they realize that they're being tailed by other ships, which they believe to be government patrols and Androma thinks that they're from Arcadius, which is her home planet where she's wanted and so she's like, oh shit They're they're finally coming after me and then they get chased the pursuers shoot at them They shoot back at their pursuers, etc. You know, it's just a big action scene We can't really care about it that much because we don't really care about the characters that much so I Mean there's not the much being given to us here. It's just words on a page You know, like you can get away with having action scenes with no real emotional connection in Visual form like if this was a movie or something it might work But here all you have are words on a page So you got to do something with them and you have to make us care So then we get a chapter from the perspective of someone named Claren in year 12 I don't know who Claren is. I don't know what's going on in this chapter It's very short and it's all an italics So I think it's like either a flashback or some sort of dreamscape world or something. I I don't know. I don't know who I don't know what I don't know why I don't know how Let's move on So then we go to the perspective of a fellow named Dex who is In the one of the ships that's chasing the Marauder and we learned that apparently he is some sort of bounty hunter and that he's been chasing down Androma for months and Well, that's that's about it. He's like, haha, I will get you Androma You shall be mine soon and I guess that's a fine intro to a character But then he immediately Threatens his pilot and he comes across as kind of a douchebag Move he commanded sir. I am under direct orders from general Cortas to Dex squeezed his fists the pilot flinched back as for crimson triangular blades sprung out of each of Dex's gloves Just over his knuckles move over the pilot stumbled as he leaked leaped from his chair So long story short the Marauder flies into a trap and it gets Bordered by Dex and the other people that are coming after them the crew says like okay We're gonna fight we're not gonna take us alive and they get their weapons and apparently Androma uses swords and I'm just thinking why? Why would you use swords in a futuristic setting like this like guns are Guns are better in pretty much every way. That's why we use them nowadays rather than swords Like it's mentioned at a few points that Androma can kind of like dodge or deflect bullets um how Like she has no genetic Modifications or cybernetic enhancements or psychic powers or anything that's mentioned that would allow her to do that like again in Star Wars They they use swords. Yes, the Jedi use lightsabers But the universe is set up in a way that will allow them to use those like okay they have this psychic connection to the force which allows them to Deflect blaster bolts back at people or just dodge them. Okay. It makes sense. It's a it's a better weapon that way But this does not have that justification So throughout this we learned that Dex and Androma used to be romantically involved together. They used to be an item okay, and then they Dex comes face-to-face with Androma and she's angry and she keeps fighting people and It's it's a weird scene. It's written in a weird way With a crackle of her swords She lunged forward and cut off three heads in one scissoring slice the body sagged then landed in a heap at Andy's feet If you could cut off three of their heads with one stroke how How close together were they standing? This is also where we learned that Androma's cuffs like the one she wears on her wrists are there to hold her burn skin together No, that's not how that works like your skin Will usually heal even if it's burned really badly and like sure you might need grafts or something But if you can get that Your your skin is not going to fall apart if it was burned years ago What? It's just a weird thing to say. It's like they're trying to give Androma personality quirks by doing stuff like that and It's just doesn't make any sense so long story short Androma and her crew are beaten and then they're captured alive and then Dex and the other people that caught them bring in a Screen so that they can talk to general Cortes who is the leader of Arcadius, which remember was our Androma's home planet and this is also where we get Androma's backstory or at least part of it so it turns out that Androma was a specter for Kaylee who is Cortes's daughter and then She somehow killed Kaylee in some sort of spaceship crash What is a specter? I I don't know It's a some kind of soldier or bodyguard person like I guess they're super badass or something like the thing is the book never tells us What a specter is which can be fine if you just allow people to figure it out through context But then it doesn't provide us with the context we need to figure it out either So you just go through the whole book kind of trying to guess what a specter is Like this book will give you in your face exposition at all the wrong times and then it will give you Nothing at all the wrong times Now that aside, I think this is an okay backstory for Androma to have like she clearly feels guilt over killing someone by accident and she did Escape a death sentence, you know, that's why she's a fugitive. So Yeah, I think it's a decent idea because the main character fleeing stuff is Pretty common in just all sorts of genres all sorts of books But the main character fleeing real crimes that they actually committed and they have no real justification for Yeah, that's That that's rare and I think that's a neat idea The problem is that like a lot of things in this book It's brought up too much Like they keep mentioning it every couple of pages and they keep showing flashbacks And they keep talking about oh, I feel so bad about it And it just feels Stupid after a while like the emotion wears off like if you really wanted us to Feel how guilty she is then Why not show us that like for example the job she's being hired to do is to rescue uh, kaley's brother who's been captured and so maybe she could be motivated not just by wanting to get her old life back and wanted to go home but by Feeling really bad that she killed this dude's sister and trying to make up for it in a way like that would be interesting But the book never does anything with that So like I said kortos offers them a job his son veylin Was apparently kidnapped two years earlier And there was no ransom or demands or anything sent to him So they had no idea what happened But they think he was taken by the government of this planet called zen patera Or at least I think that's how you say it. It might be zen terra I'm not sure that is the peace silent. I don't know. I don't really care But anyways, basically they need a third party to go rescue them because they think that okay if we send in Arcadian soldiers, then it's going to provoke a war which nobody really wants so androma agrees to this in exchange for a pardon and Then we get another chapter from the perspective of claren and she brings up a lot of I don't know buzzwords, which are probably important, but I don't know what they mean like yielded and conduits I Like again, it doesn't explain what it is Does not give us the context to figure it out by the end of the book I still had no idea what was going on in pretty much any of the claren chapters So I just don't give a fuck So dex gets sent with androma So that he can be made a guardian again because he also apparently did something bad and as punishment was scripted of his titles And he doesn't really want to go with her but cortis kind of forces him to now. What is a guardian? I don't know like just like with specters It doesn't tell us the context is never given you might be noticing a pattern here And they take off with a robotic ai named alphi like it's it's an ai inside of a humanoid body, which Okay, that's fine. I'm not even sure why I bring this up because alphi is not important to the story And he's not that interesting of a character on his own either So then we cut to a chapter from the perspective of nor and actually I want to take a brief moment to clarify that this book is written in third person like it's third person limited, but I mean, that's a hell of a lot better than first person because normally with these shitty Young adults or young adult esk novels that have a bunch of characters that all see important stuff It's just first person from all of them and it's very difficult to tell them apart and it's just really shitty. So I'm That's one area where this book did not fail. It's not something Good that it did necessarily. It's just an area where it didn't fail But anyways, uh, it cuts to a character named nor and nor is the queen of zen patera And we get a whole chapter talking about how zen patera's resources dried up, you know, many decades ago and Their their people started to become impoverished and they started starving and then they're That somehow led to a giant war called the cataclysm where they fought with the unified systems And it destroyed pretty much the rest of the planet now I don't really know what the unified system is systems are but we'll uh, we'll get into that later And nor basically just wants not only to help her people But she wants to get revenge on the unified systems because she feels like okay They're the ones that uh destroyed all this. They're the ones that killed my parents. She's she's angry with them So she has a double motivation And honestly, this is a decent chapter now. It's basically just pure exposition much like other chapters have been going on but One the exposition that we're learning is actually cool We're we're learning neat stuff which actually gives some sort of context to this world and It gives some character to it and we understand Why things are the way they are which is neat Uh, we're introduced to an actual cool character because I do like the character of nor like I said she Has decent villain motivations. It's not really a spoiler. This whole thing is full of spoilers You should know that by this point, but it's uh a decent motivation for a villain and Okay, I kind of liked that and most importantly it has actual emotion behind it like we feel Uh the poverty that these people are stuck in we feel their indignation. We feel uh nor's anger and so Yes, this actually works as uh As exposition because there's other other stuff there and the other nor chapters are kind of similar like They never overuse her really. It's just occasionally we'll cut in we'll have a chapter from her perspective and Most of them follow that same path. So it works. So androma and dex and her crew go to their job, they're kind of nervous, etc and um Well, there is one thing I want to bring up because It it's just kind of odd and it makes me question how weapons work in this world Whatever you say androma brex said if you don't mind I'm going to take little gilly here down to check out the new weapons with the supplies the general gave us We can make sparks large enough to destroy an entire moon now Is that meant to be taken literally like I think it is and usually in situations like this It's best to assume that yeah, yeah, just take them out their word Don't assume that the characters are lying and you have to read between the lines if if normal people can just In a small ship, keep in mind can just get access to weapons that can destroy an entire moon Everyone is flying around with their own little death stars, essentially Wouldn't that completely change the landscape of this world? Like wouldn't every government be focused on keeping those weapons out of other people's hands and trying to make sure that they have the most Powerful ones kind of like nuclear weapons, you know use them as a deterrent more than anything I that that sounds kind of neat, but again the book is unclear and it never does anything with it So we also learn a little bit more about how androma and dex know each other basically like I said, they were an item at some point and She stabbed him nearly killed him and then stole his ship like the marauder was originally his and she took it from him And despite this they're still horny over each other like they still keep looking at each other thinking wow They're so beautiful. I miss being with them and that's uh Okay, that that may have been dramatic If we didn't see things from both of their perspectives because if we just saw things from androma's perspective and she's Looking at dex and thinking man, I still kind of feel attached to him. I wonder how he feels about me I hope he's no longer angry. I hope he can forgive me that sort of thing Then maybe that there could be some drama there, but we also see things from dex's perspective. So We we know that they have already forgiven each other And so this whole thing just kind of feels like it goes in circles like neither of them wants to confront the other about it And then a little bit later on you'll see they actually kind of do confront each other about it and it still goes nowhere like Jesus guys We also get a brief flashback from dex and we learn a little bit more about him Basically, he worked for years to become a guardian again. No idea what that is It they somehow work for Arcadius's government, uh, and he joins the bounty hunter branch of the guardians Again, if you work for the government That's literally not what a bounty hunter is Like a bounty hunter by definition is someone who does not work for the government who only goes after fugitives because the government offers some sort of reward for it. Like that's That's literally what that means Just come up with a new term or something if you're going to do that call them like the fugitive catchers or The police force or the patrolmen or something like that like you could do that And it would actually make some sort of sense in that case And we also learned that dex basically met androma after she had fled Arcadius And she was basically a starving wretch on the streets And it was only four years earlier. So Uh, she would have been like 17 at the time and now they're about 21 to 22 years old And basically he just found her and he's like, okay We can be friends. I can teach you stuff and that's pretty much all the information we get So they're flying and they wind up explaining their plan, which is essentially that they are going to Just land somewhere meet dex's informant at a pub And then we'll learn where things go from there Like they're near the prison where they think valen is being held And then we get a brief valen chapter where valen is, you know, being tortured and stuff. Oh, it's so terrible And then he meets queen nor And at this point I started to wonder like why did they kidnap him? You know, obviously they didn't want to ransom or anything and they didn't even announce that they did it so Uh, they aren't getting much use out of it. So what are they doing? And the thing is it's fine for the audience to be questioning that Like if the audience doesn't know things then that can, you know, get them hooked in and it can make us want to read What happens next like, oh, I just have to stay up another couple of minutes and read this next chapter But the thing is none of the characters ever ask either like Not once do they go, hey Wouldn't it wouldn't it be kind of weird to kidnap a head of state's child if they're not going to do anything with that? What maybe they're planning something else like Not a single character just stops and wonders things like that, which is uh Just one of the many many oversights in this like that that's probably the single word I can use to describe all of this that is the most powerful is just it's full of oversights And uh speaking of which, uh when they leave the marauder to go off to the Pub to meet dex's contact. They actually lock away alfie. Remember the the artificial intelligence They lock him away on a part of their ship so that he can't do anything to the ship and he can't communicate with dex and It's kind of set up like they're going to betray dex at some point or that and a couple of uh Conversations they have very brief conversations. They have where they're like, oh, maybe Maybe he's gonna betray us. We should do something to betray him first and It's kind of set up like okay There's going to be some sort of conflict involving this later like maybe they'll betray him and he'll be upset or Maybe they'll try to betray him and it won't work and they'll get them in trouble Or maybe they'll be on the verge of doing it But then androma just decides, you know what? I can't do it or something like that, but They just kind of forget about it like they set it up and then again Never do anything with it basically the only reason that Androma doesn't betray him and dex doesn't do anything with her is because True love I guess like or too love as I like to call it because it's stupid and doesn't add anything And we're not given any real reason to Care about it So they go into the bar the bar is super dingy and full of criminal scum and stuff And there's some dumb lines to describe it war was a heartless thing claiming lives left and right But it was the survivors who had to continue battling even after the fight was over Okay, so they meet their contact a woman named soyena and Soyena is an odd character. She's she's not in the book all that much. She is overall a minor character basically she used to Be romantically involved with dex and her main character Uh personality trait is that she is horny like she She agrees to help them while doing this mostly just because she wants to have sex with dex again I take your advice from now on. I'm party And I mean, I'm not saying you can't make a character who's like that but It feels a little out of place like it feels a little silly compared to Uh the tone of the rest of the book and the other characters and we never Get that to spend that much time with her to really find out why she's like this and to justify that character trait Which would probably make it more interesting at least and also she can kind of raise the dead Somehow like she's essentially a necromancer. It's never really explained. Uh, how it works Uh, it's just that like if someone dies and she gets to them within three minutes. She can revive them good as new Okay, a little weird and then again, they use some dumb words to describe her Soyena had a passion for darkness and androma resella's soul was the darkest of them all And basically what this made me realize is that dex and androma both have way too much backstory Like again, they're only 21 to 22 years old But they have all of the life experience of a 35 year old Like it's it's weird because they're both They have been trained to be these crazy badass soldiers They both have lost those titles. They've both Gone off and done other careers and stuff for years and years long enough to have like an actual reputation And then they're trying to get it back And they've also had a bunch of relationships with people. It's It's odd Like if someone was you know in their 30s and they had that it would be fine But it feels weird to have Young people that have done that much like if you're going to make a young adult novel or new adult novel I'm not I don't really care how this would be classified But if you're going to make a novel with young main characters, make them young main characters Don't make them old main characters in the bodies of young main characters. It's it's just dumb Like it reminds me of when I read the red knight a while ago and the main character was already uh known far and wide as a really Notable mercenary captain, but he was only 20 years old and like Okay, even if he's supposed to be really young for his position that just feels weird like if he was 26 or 27 it would work, but as it stands it's uh Oh It just it's weird. I wish I could find better words to describe a lot of this stuff It's just weird and dumb and I don't see the point to a lot of it So basically we learn about the plan at this point the plan is to get Dex and Androma arrested and they'll be thrown into prison with valin and then soyena who works at the prison will help them to escape and they will grab valin and then they will go out to the uh Body disposal place like the garbage shoot I guess And what they do is they throw all the dead prisoners in there and then they just open it up and let them get sucked out into space Quick question, um If zen patera is running very low on resources including water and minerals and stuff that they need to uh Fertilize their fields and grow food. Why would they be dumping bodies into space? like They they need resources is the thing like normally when a person dies their body rots which is them being eaten by like insects and bacteria and plants and stuff and then they use the the Nutrients and resources and stuff to propagate their own species and then something else eats them and then something else eats them It's it's the circle of life. That's how that works. But if you throw them out into space, you're wasting all of that. It's It's it's weird in fact In fact in the real world there are people who kind of don't want to be buried in a casket the traditional way because it's A waste of all those resources, you know you're being put underground and then the worms and everything can't get to you and so The plants and animals are going to start to die. I actually had a friend who died a little over a year ago and he Didn't want to be buried like that. He actually literally told us just prop me up against a tree and let it bury me which Unfortunately, we couldn't do that's illegal. So his wife had him cremated. But you know that the point is People need those resources And your planet is desperate for it. So why not just grind him up and make him into fertilizer So androma and dex kiss and Then we cut away from that even though it was getting kind of interesting To a chapter with nor in fact that actually happens a lot in this book they'll be in the middle of a tense situation and then it cuts to someone else for a chapter or two and basically nor also has a nightmare and she is also uh Having sex with her bodyguard and that's about all we learn here and It wouldn't bother me that much, but I do wish that We gotten more with that like maybe her bodyguard was like the one person that she could uh Get close to and they do mention that but then we never really see him again after this chapter so Uh, okay So basically androma and dex start a bar fight to try and get themselves arrested glass rained down on top of them Lira opened her eyes to see brek hunched over beside her coughing smoke from her lungs eyes watering and red Mountains crumble lira thought how strong had gilly's homemade sparks been Perhaps they'd been a bit too generous with the amount of powder they poured into the orbed casings Lira rolled to her hands and knees and crawled past the scattered playing cards Bottles of broken liquid and moaning bodies on the floor Somewhere across the room the bartender howled out curses over the wasted liquor My leg someone screamed My leg so Androma and dex get arrested and they get taken away and thrown into lunamere, which is like Supposed to be the worst prison in the galaxy like you're there You sit in a dark damp cell all day. You get tortured. You're barely fed and then you die and that seems like really harsh for people who basically just Assaulted others. Yes, and they did break stuff. I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished for that But I am saying that lunamere really feels like somewhere you'd put serial killers and political opponents like What is even Why It seems weird for them to do that. Like I feel like they get tossed in the drunk tank or something, but Okay, whatever and we get another fucking flashback from androma Turns out she was friends with kaley remember general cordis's daughter And kaley actually encouraged her to go on a joy ride with her essentially in the spaceship and they flew around for a while and Androma was piloting and then she crashed and kaley died and the thing is That's all you need to know about it and this first flashback gives you all of that But it keeps coming back to it Like we get this same flashback not even really from different perspectives, but in slightly different ways So many times like six or seven times throughout the entire book And I kept thinking that okay near the end of the book They're going to reveal some new piece of information that will change the way we look at it Like maybe kaley was actually committing suicide and she crashed the ship on purpose and androma Tried to save her and couldn't it's like okay. That would be kind of interesting, but No, there are new there's no new information. No new revelations just Everything I told you is everything the book gives us And then we get veyland having a brief flashback to right after his sister died And it gets odd veyland took equal amounts of pain and comfort in this as he walked They could throw androma into the pits of tenebrous for as long as they liked even give her a death sentence But it wouldn't bring kaley back when he passed by his sister's room He caught the slightest hint of her summertime scent. It lingered like a distant breeze quickly swept away when reality took its place Why do you know what your sister smells like? And we get some claren chapters and rather than just keeping to keep going back and forth between claren and everything else I'm just gonna give you most of the claren stuff right now. So Basically it turns out claren is nor's mom. She used to be the queen of zen patera And during the cataclysm, which remember was a giant war between zen patera and the unified systems Uh, she was captured by cordus's soldiers like Their soldiers somehow broke onto the planet itself and went to the palace where the royals were and then they kidnapped her But they missed the others and apparently The war went on for like years afterwards Uh, which is weird like if the Battle was already in the capital, which was like the most important place to protect then presumably they had already okay Whatever whatever and basically claren spends years as cordus's prisoner and they start having sex and Yes, that is extremely rapey, but it's not rapey in the way that you're thinking We're gonna circle back to that later. I just want you to keep that in mind It's it stays rapey. I'm not saying anything here is justified because it's not but like Just we'll get to it And then we get more flashbacks Again from valin. He has apparently no guards and that's how he was able to be kidnapped because Why would the son of a head of state need guards? Like it that just doesn't really make sense and like sure sure I get that's Just fine, whatever fuck it. I'm not complaining about that anymore so so yina unlocks the cells for valin and androma and they managed to escape and they start killing guards And it's phrased as androma dealing out death like a deck of cards Just what there's so many like weird moments like that which just completely took me out of it and made me remember Oh, yeah, I'm reading a book and it's not a particularly good one And they managed to grab valin and they're trying to drag him away But he's too weak so instead she knocks him out and continues dragging him away Which is weird because like even if he's having trouble standing Or having trouble walking he can trying to carry him between the two of you Would be easier if he was able to help a little bit Like have you guys ever tried to actually carry an unconscious person? It's total dead weight. It's it's hard You know, it's very exhausting if you can even do it at all You have to be fairly strong to pick up someone who is your weight or heavier So they escape and I'll admit that the action scene that Goes through all that is not the worst thing ever like I don't have too much to complain about there And they get valin to the ship. He's still unconscious and he's still unhealthy. They mention there's something abnormal in his blood They don't know what it is. Okay. I mean admittedly they could do a more subtle job of foreshadowing that something wrong is gonna happen, but At least they are in fact setting it up before it happens Like, you know, this is something being set up which does pay off later Which is more than I can say for most of the things that happen in this book So while they are traveling back to Arcadius Dex and Androma finally confront each other about their feelings and about what went on between them before and basically it turns out that dex only betrayed Androma and Tried to turn her into the Arcadian authorities because his dad was in prison on Arcadius and General Cortis told him hey, I'll let your dad go if you can get her if not I'll kill your dad Now I don't like this for a couple of reasons one It kind of sanitizes his actions all at once So we don't really have an arc where he realizes. Oh, I did something wrong And Androma has to learn to forgive him or something like that which would be a lot more interesting But even setting that aside It kind of forgets that Androma also did terrible things to him Like she literally tried to murder him and then she stole his ship which apparently he doesn't even want his ship back Like he he never says or does anything to suggest like hey the marauder's mind. Can I have it back? Like no The book treats it like Okay, Androma needs to forgive him because he was trying to save his father and like sure that is morally ambiguous Like you are betraying a friend in order to save your father, but like it's understandable and It's weird because It's only saying that she needs to forgive him It's not mentioning that she also did terrible things and he needs to forgive her and like I don't like accusing characters of being Mary Sue's because 90 of the time when people do that It's not accurate and I don't like using it because it just puts the idea in more people's heads And then they start using it inappropriately, but Yeah, that is something that Would make a character of Mary Sue if other people Harming them is seen as the worst thing in the universe. Like how could you ever possibly do this? But them harming other people is just tihi. Well, I'm just not like other girls So we go back to Noor. We turn it turns out she made a mind control substance of some sort Uh, they don't actually give it a name. I don't believe and the rules for it are never clear It's just okay. Someone touches it. It absorbs into their skin and into their bloodstream and then they will immediately do whatever Noor says Um All right, like the thing is there has to be some sort of rules for it Otherwise, there's no tension like if the rules are just that it wears off after a while and it needs to be reapplied then Okay, that would be one thing because doing it like this makes her too powerful as a villain and her uh Technology if you want to call it that is just too powerful as a villain So we know that the main characters are going to come along and stop it somehow But they're probably going to have to do it through some artificial deus ex machina So ironically making your villain too powerful can make them less intimidating and then There's more dumb lines. She turned to dry and zon with a grin as solid as steel My soldiers it's time to darken the stars She actually does that a lot. She talks about like feasting on the bones of the galaxy and stuff. It's like The authors seem to think That by making lines more melodramatic they make them better It's it's not better. The idea is to make your audience feel like you're there Also, I'd like to point out that despite all of this were like a third of the way through the book So something goes wrong with the marauder some techno battle. It's not important The engine is bad and so they can't fly anymore and they crash on a planet called adhira Which is lira's home planet. Remember lira the pilot with the scales on her And as soon as they crash, uh, no one is hurt or anything. The ship is damaged But you know, you can repair that and as soon as they crash lira's brother named lawn greets them and Her and lawn go off together for a little while and long story short It turns out that their aunt is the queen of adhira and Tldr lira was supposed to become queen after this, but she fled responsibility um Okay, like I really hate this trope this trope of like a prince or princess Fleeing their responsibilities because oh, I just want to be wild and free like for starters, it's just annoying that someone who Was presumably raised in a Environments where they got kind of everything they needed and never really struggled that much Is acting so spoiled like this. That's just annoying but also like You don't actually have to Take on the responsibility if you don't want to like all you have to do Is find some unscrupulous politician and say yo, dude You want to be my prime minister? You can have all the real power while i'm just your puppet and i'm gonna go off and Drink and party and stuff all the time What say you and like it wouldn't be that hard to find someone like that Like it's it's weird that they always choose to run off like they never even decide okay You know what i'm gonna do this, but i'm gonna do it my own way and maybe have a different ruling style or something and then during the conversation with the queen The queen mentions that court us is a good leader, but his honesty and his methods are questionable at best and that just throws me off because For a couple of reasons one this book so far has treated him as though he's a nasty dictator who will like kill political opponents and execute people if it helps get him what he wants, which is You know really not something that you think of in a good leader, but also he is a ruling person called a general usually when a general is in charge of A country of any sort that means the country is run by some sort of military junta Like it came to power through a coup or through a revolution of some sort And it keeps its power just through pure force of arms like it's not even interested in pretending to be a real government It's just like yeah, we have the guns give us shit And the thing is it never this book never goes into any sort of detail about how the general came to power Like it's mentioned that his daughter Kaylee was supposed to be his successor after he died Obviously, she isn't anymore because she's dead but that would imply that this is more of a monarchy than a military government and Okay, if it's a monarchy then why is he called general and is he a nasty dictator or not? Like the book is kind of giving us different Things there which don't match up at all And honestly like if he is just essentially a king if they essentially have a hereditary monarchy, but their leader's title is just general then Okay, why not take a moment to explain the origin of that title like worldbuilding guys just A little bit of worldbuilding goes a long way Like giving us a little bit of the history of Arcadius would tell us not only about general court Us as a character, but also about this Mirabelle galaxy as a whole and what Arcadius's place is in the galaxy and The sort of environment androma was raised in and how she may have wound up this way Like there's a lot you can do just by giving us a little bit of information and this book cannot do that So basically while their ship is being repaired on adira, they Spend they just fuck around on the planet basically and we spend around one quarter of the book here Which not a lot of important stuff happens so I can just give you the uh The clip notes version basically Lira refuses to be queen like her aunt asks her hey, do you want to be queen? She's like no and it's not even like she has to think on it for a minute or anything It's nothing like that. Uh, we learned that zen patera used to be part of the unified systems Again, uh, i'm not sure what the unified systems are. I believe there's some sort of military alliance rather than an actual government because you know, uh Arcadius and adira and zen patera and stuff all have you know their own thing going on and there's never any reference to like A higher government's like a president or Parliament or anything like that. So i'm pretty sure it's just a military alliance, but again The book never really brings that up Which also means that the cataclysm was a civil war which I guess that doesn't make that much of a difference, but it still would have been nice to know before this And apparently zen patera was thought of as a weak planet Because the queen mentions that it's always been a weak planet and now it's even weaker which is weird because They fought off the entire galaxy by themselves for over a decade And apparently a shitload of stuff got destroyed not just on their planet, but on other stuff So that doesn't sound like a weak planet to me. Maybe you should stay consistent with the things you say We get our first mention of the ancients who came to colonize these planets and terraform them And again, that's why I think that this is just humans from earth many years in the future rather than a completely original world And then there's apparently also some sort of generic dance festival Which everyone has to attend because every shitty young adult novel and a lot of good young adult novels Have shitty dance festivals that the characters have to attend And while they're at that festival dex is staring longingly longingly at androma thinking about how much he wants to dance with her and I just have to read these dumb lines because they're fun She could have been the woman of his dreams, but today Dex didn't care in truth all he cared about was catching a glimpse of andy in the crowd Andy with her stab you in the balls and laugh as you scream eyes And also while this is going on veyland and androma talk about What's been going on like hey, she accidentally killed his sister and it's been years since they really saw each other And he long story short. He does forgive her You know, he does talk about how hey, you know what? I've had a lot of time to think while I was in that prison cell And honestly like I don't it's not that I don't care anymore. It's that this wasn't your fault and Just being angry isn't going to help anything and Honestly, I kind of like this scene other than the fact that it ends with The darkness seemed a little brighter now as if it wasn't entirely black after all This isn't your average everyday darkness this is advanced darkness But you know joking aside that is a decent scene. I kind of liked it. It was a bit heartwarming. It was veyland Coming to terms with some shit that had happened in his past and it was clearly a load off for androma as well But the problem is that dex sees them while they're together like this and He thinks that they're suddenly an item and they're going to be smooching on each other and it makes him sad So while they're at the generic dance festival the people of zen patera attack you know, there's just a bunch of soldiers who come out of nowhere and Start shooting people and everyone's like, oh, no Let's run away and then androma and dex and the crew along with veyland. I have to battle their way out of the Dance festival generic dance festival. I genuinely it doesn't even matter what it's called It doesn't matter what it's called. They're all the fucking same it's just A dance where people put on pretty pretty dresses and it's not the only one in this fucking book either So we're just moving past it. But that basically they battle their way to a ship hangar Which honestly is not a terrible battle scene. Like I was kind of into it for a little bit. It's not amazing, but I liked it. It's not the worst thing in this book and they escape on a new ship, which is not the marauder Uh, which actually doesn't matter that much. But anyways, they head to arcadeus and I don't know how long this takes like knowing how long It takes to go from place to place is kind of important in spacefaring sci-fi Like if it takes months to even get across the solar system Then that says one thing it says like, okay The these are clearly very different places very disconnected from one another It would be difficult for anyone to have any sort of centralized government yada yada But if it takes like two days to go from one end of the galaxy to the other Then you realize, okay This is actually a pretty small world despite the fact that, you know, it's a massive galaxy. It's it's actually seems small and We we never learn any of that Like, you know, not a single reference is made. And in fact, we don't even know how long this uh Book takes place over the course of like it could be like a week for all I know And that's actually kind of important to the characters as well because if androma and dex Are getting this attached to one another again after being apart for so long and It's after like a week then that's stupid if it's over the course of like three months then Well, that that makes a little more sense because again, they they were Already a thing in the past and this is just them reconnecting rather than connecting in the first place but We never get any idea of what it's like. So We don't know what's going on So they finally make it to Arcadius and we learned that the main continent on the planet is called Airey, Iree I'm I'm not sure exactly how to say that which is weird because It made me realize that all of the names in this book Not just the planets, but also people and stuff don't really follow any sort of pattern. So like You know in England, for example, most of the names follow some sort of pattern You can tell like, okay, that's that's English or in Spain, you know, the names are all usually Spanish names or at least a Spanish version of names from other languages Whereas with this it just sort of throws in a bunch of names like some of them are Kind of normal like Arcadius some of them are a little weird and some of them are really weird like Airey or Zen Paterra and It makes this the culture of this world. You want to call it that feel more like a muddled mess than any sort of cohesive thing that would have an actual identity which again Having an identity in your world is important and this book doesn't do that and Uh, it's also referred to as a military planet like Arcadius is just the military planet Which again raises the question How is the general in charge did he overthrow a previous government or something like Just one or two sentences is really all we would need But there's so many points in this book where one or two sentences would give it so much leeway with me But there's none. It doesn't even feel like they didn't try It kind of feels like that at a few points, but it doesn't feel like that for the most part It feels like they had no idea what they were doing So they find the meet back up with general courtes and He basically says, you know zen paterra kidnapped my son That's an act of war kind of and so i'm gonna have to invite the other leaders in the unified systems here So that we can figure out what to do about zen paterra and androma is like wait. No, that's not a good idea And he's like i'm gonna do it anyways. I don't care. That's dangerous which Just get a big fucking neon sign that says foreshadowing foreshadowing And he also decides he's gonna keep androma around I'm really not sure why because he specifically says he's gonna make her A bodyguard for valin Why like he already General courtes very clearly hates androma because you know, even if it was an accident she did kill his daughter Now he's assigning her as a bodyguard for his son his only living child now and Like is he trying to fuck with her and like he also refuses to give her back her ship or Scrub her record clean or anything like that if she doesn't do it. So I don't I just Why like is he just fucking with her because I don't think he is It's it certainly never feels like he's just fucking with her Uh, is is he gonna kill her anyways? And if he was why wouldn't he just do it now? It's just It's so odd. It doesn't fit with the character that has been set up so far Such as it is because we don't actually know that much about the general but It doesn't fit and it feels off like again This was written by two separate people So maybe one of them wanted the general to be more reasonable and one of them wanted him to be just a crazy dictator And they just kind of rather than compromising in some way some of the time he's crazy Some of the times he's reasonable, which doesn't really feel right So then androma's father enters the story very briefly um, he's never been mentioned before this point and apparently he is General cordus's head specter again. I'm pretty sure that means he's a bodyguard but hard to tell and He he her dad is the one that helped her escape, you know when she was in prison years Excuse me years earlier. He's the one that gave her a key and allowed her to run off And they've had no contact since which You know makes sense because she's a fugitive and if he contacted her and didn't tell the general about it Then he would probably be executed Uh, and androma is angry about this because she's like you should have come with me dad You you should have also been eating out of garbage bins and giving up your life Even though you already put yourself at great risk to help me out here And maybe that's like expected of parents But still like he did put himself at great risk and he risked his career his life his wife's life To help her out and that's not good enough for her And so androma comes across as A whiny little bitch right here. I know that sounds a little harsh But that really is what she comes across as and I was kind of on her dad's side Even though the narrative clearly didn't want me to be on her dad's side But then he talks about how she Ruin the family name and how he worked his whole life to become an honorable member of society and how she kind of ruined that And the only way he could hold on to that was by not contacting her So like again the narrative is clearly trying to paint him as an asshole, which he is Uh to make me sympathize more with androma, but instead i'm just feeling like no you You're you're both terrible people So dex and androma Again Start talking about how much they love each other. How much they want to smooch on each other and no progress is made What is it about memories and he said suddenly walking back towards him that gives them the ability to hurt us so badly Dex shook his head the past is powerful. I think you and I both know that So uh the queen of adira remember lyra's aunt uh comes back and she brings the marauder with her. It's all fixed and There was really no point to the characters being without it Like it didn't cost them anything to get it repaired Uh and they weren't left without it for a long time They didn't find themselves in a situation where oh, I need the marauder, but like it's gone It was just okay. They left in a new ship like Functionally they could have just taken the marauder and left adira with that and come here and it would have made no difference and then uh Androma's mom shows up and she's pretty much the same as her dad in that her mom is Kind of vapid and talking about how oh you ruined our name But her mom also kind of tries to connect with her again And androma's just mad because like you didn't come with me You should have come with me and been a fugitive eating out of garbage cans And always fearing for your life, which is really unreasonable to ask of anyone I think And basically it's just the same thing as the dad. So there's really no point to repeating it But it's just a little more in your face about it because the dad at least had some subtlety and you could conceivably take his side in that like The narrative clearly didn't want you to but you could conceivably do so But her mom is just like so over the top and talking about how eating out of garbage cans is a silly thing to do Exact quote by the way and so androma just screams at her tells her to get out And it's just repeating the same shit and it serves no purpose So then the second fancy generic ball In this book starts again And it's just it is what it is they spend time getting ready because Despite androma being this badass mercenary space captain who's known as the bloody baroness And who is constantly haunted by the ghosts of people she's killed and feels enormous guilt over getting her friends killed Despite all of that She also likes to wear pretty dresses and put on makeup and stuff Am I a pretty girl? I mean, I guess having multiple aspects to a character is fine, but like Make them actually fit together And maybe maybe I'd be okay with that if this weren't kind of trying to be a young adult book and Every other one did something similar where you have a badass heroine who doesn't take shit from anybody and likes to fight and can Be up men all the time But also is a girl a girl sometimes like If I hadn't seen that so many times it wouldn't bother me so much, but it fucking does so the general makes a speech to um both His citizens and the leaders of the unified systems who showed up there And at that exact moment valence mind control kicks in and nor controls him and he stabs The general he stabs his dad never was like whoa, what the hell and then zen peter soldiers attack Again And this time I have to ask how did they sneak in? Like they got here with no warning. No one fought them And they were able to break past or anything. They just pop up outside the ball and start killing folks and Okay, they kind of hand wave it away with adira because they're like, oh, they don't really have a military presence and Okay, I can kind of accept that but Arcadius is literally referred to as a military planet and it's kind of hinted at that they have the most powerful armed forces in the entire galaxy So you'd think they would take security seriously And if there was some sort of gap in security That allowed the soldiers to get through. I mean that that could be interesting But like what was it? Was it valent? Did he let them in? possibly It's never said and just this book is pretty long. Okay, it's nearly 600 pages and they spend So much time Repeating the same shit over and over again and so much time on things that don't matter Like I like I said, we got like this much of the book That's just on adira and nothing interesting happens there and just so much time wasted and We don't spend any time talking about stuff that's actually kind of important like this Is just It's so clumsy So while all of this chaos is going on uh androma Goes up to fight valent and like his dad is still alive barely And she has a knife now and she's like hey valent don't kill him And he's like i'm gonna kill him and she's like don't do it and he's like i'm gonna do it and then they have a knife fight and It goes back and forth for a while somehow and then valent wins by stabbing androma and How did he do that? because not only was valent in prison for years and should still be uh working his way back up to being you know in shape and everything but He's never been Even hinted at as a badass fighter like as far as we know, he's never fought in his life He has no idea how to do it, but androma is a very skilled fighter, you know Even though it doesn't make that much sense Uh in the world that they set up She's able to fight dudes who have guns just using two swords And we see her do that plenty of time. She mows down bad guys like oh, I mean not like it's nothing But actually no a lot of the time it's like it's nothing But she can't defeat valent Why? Seriously, why that doesn't make any sense. I mean, maybe you could say okay She's she's holding back because she doesn't actually want to hurt him, which I mean that could be An excuse, you know, she could or she could get distracted or something But the books never bring it up. There are so many little outs like there's so many little problems like that that you you could Give yourself an outwith but These authors just completely fail to do that in every way, which makes me wonder what the editing process was like for this So dex sees this he sees the general and androma get stabbed and amidst all the chaos with soldiers killing each other and stuff He manages to drag the general and androma back to the marauder Not sure how he does that because again, they're both unconscious So he would have had to like carry one on each shoulder And I mean, maybe he's strong enough to do that, but it's never mentioned that dex is like a big strong guy or anything. So Again, like just just a brief sentence would have fixed this but okay, whatever and everyone else that's there including The marauder's crew gets hit with the mind control substance that nor had and like it looks like they die But then they rise back up a few moments later and they're like, yes, my queen You know she'll do whatever you say So then nor arrives personally and she's controlling all of them through her psychic powers, which apparently she has okay Here's the thing You can put like magic or psychic powers or something into a sci-fi setting Especially if it's a soft sci-fi setting like this you can get away with that. You really can But you need to bring it up less than 500 pages in like we're over 500 pages in when that gets brought up and It feels like the opposite of a deus ex machina because a deus ex machina is basically when The heroes are in some sort of trouble and the authors can't think of a way to get them out of it so they just Basically have them get lucky and at the last second something will come in and save the day And it's usually very unsatisfying and the problem is most of the time that The authors did not set things up properly beforehand like if they had Properly hinted at it earlier, then that could usually work not always, but it can usually work Uh, the this is like the opposite of that. I I'm not sure what you would call it But it's like the villain suddenly coming in and saying ha ha. I have a new power like Okay, I mean before this we were wondering. Oh, what kind of devious plan do you have to take care of all this and I mean, obviously we knew about the mind control stuff, but we were thinking, okay, what kind of Uh secret military maneuver or something are you going to use to get your planet back on track and to destroy all the people who wronged you? and I guess it's just having psychic powers, which we never knew about before which is I mean again had they hinted at it earlier Or even just come right out and said it earlier Then that could have been fun. In fact, it could have made the character of norse seem more intimidating, but as it stands Uh, they tried a little too hard to make her seem like this overwhelming powerful force And ironically that makes her less intimidating. It makes her less of a Compelling villain and it makes her let it makes her seem less powerful And it takes away from the tension of the story because we know Okay, at some point the heroes are going to have to find a way to beat her so We we just feel like the authors are gonna have to write themselves out of that corner Well, that's kind of disappointing because I kind of liked nor up until this point So while dex androma and the general are flying away on the marauder Uh, and they're all dying and they managed to stabilize androma But the general is still dying and he basically with his dying breath gives them the last bit of information they need Basically, it turns out that clarin remember nor's mom the former queen who he took prisoner is also valen's mom But it turns out that she had psychic mind powers just like nor and she actually used them To convince him that he was in love with her and then they started having sex So like I said, it was rapey just not in the way you expected. It was actually the general that was essentially getting raped there. I uh I I suppose that counts as a plot twist I'll admit. I didn't see it coming After the general realized this he got really pissed and he just stuffed clarin into a pod and shot her off into deep space where Maybe she died I'm not sure maybe the interlude chapters were her still alive trying to communicate with people using her psychic powers I think maybe that's what it is But that's also weird because like how would she have survived that like she had no food or water and very little oxygen presumably so And we don't know how her powers worked like maybe she just left her body and her mind Became one with the universe or something which would be kind of neat if that were the case but They we have no idea what the rules of this universe are like. So I don't know if she did that. I don't think she did and I have no idea what's going on and it's not like in a compelling way where we're asking the questions Oh, how are they doing this? What's going to happen? It's in a confusing way where it's like, oh, um I don't understand this what's going on And basically nor used her psychic powers to find out that valin was her brother because he kind of has them too And she realized oh, okay That's my brother and she was able to use that to build her plan around like that's why she kidnapped him in the first place was to indoctrinate him I don't think there's a better word for it but indoctrinate him into doing this and then help her kill the general and take over everything And she also While mind controlling all of the other leaders of the unified system. She just kills them all And I guess that's sad and stuff And basically the general he realizes he's about to die. So he officially passes on his title to Androma So like she is officially The general of Arcadius now And so she has access to Like classified information like in stuff. I suppose I'm like on paper. She is the commander of the armed forces and all that but Okay, I understand why he would have chosen her because he really had no choice It was like basically either her dex. I trust her more Okay, whatever. That's a that's not a big deal, but Her having that title is meaningless without the authority like if I Somehow through whatever weird legal Shenanigans found out tomorrow that I was heir to the throne of France No one would give a shit because they don't have a monarchy anymore They haven't for a very long time and I don't have an army or anything to back me up on that. So No one would give a shit. I would just be seen as a crackpot and like Yeah, I'm pretty sure nor is gonna have a similar reaction like okay androma can Strut around and say she's the rightful general all she wants like I'm the one that has a fucking army So it really doesn't mean anything And just that's uh, that's it. That's the end My reaction when I first read that was um Okay, then I guess I guess that's the end and I think the main reason that I was so nonchalant about it was Not even that it was like terrible just nonchalant about it was because The climax was really boring And it was over pretty quickly like like I said the zen paterans just kind of came out of nowhere Fought a bunch of people which they had already done once before so all the tension and surprise and everything was gone and then A bunch of the good guys were taken and mind controlled and then a couple of them got went away and Androma's the general now, but like I said that means nothing You know, it's uh, it just sort of happens quickly and then it's over and The only reason that we would conceivably care that all this shit was going down Was if we cared about the crew which I mean we don't mostly because Only lira really got any screen time here You know out of all the people that got mind controlled Only lira was someone who we actually had an idea of what she was like as a person Like the other two crewmates breck and gilly you might notice I barely mentioned them after the intro. That's because They're barely in the fucking book after the intro so In that regard it just kind of fails at what it was setting out to do uh and beyond that like Why would we care about the unified systems like? What what have they done like as far as we can tell they seem to be a bunch of Kind of unpleasant dictatorships and it's not that zen patera or nor ruling over everything would be better it probably wouldn't be but I mean, it's not like it would be that much worse. I don't think so It's not like we're thinking oh, we need to protect democracy and freedom or anything like that And we don't particularly we don't feel attached to the fate of these countries You know, it's not like we're uh being inflicted with any sort of nationalism And it's not like androma is either or any of the other characters. So in that regard it didn't even feel like it tried to make us care about this and I can't even say it was a failure. It just like did not put its energy in the right direction Overall, like I said, this is a pretty bad book mostly. It's just clumsy Like that's not to say that oh, it would be good if it was done better. Like I think if it was done better, it would be okay but Mostly that's it like it tries to do things and it fails at it because it Just can't focus on anything like the world has no real dimension or identity Like I said, we have no real feeling on what the history of this world is like or the political situation or the culture of the people who live there or just what it's like to live in this place or Hell weird geographic features, maybe not geographic, but Uh weird space features like quasars or black holes that are nearby, you know, just putting in stuff like that Could add dimension and character to this but they don't do any of that And so all we're left with is a couple of little scraps that the characters drop occasionally And those aren't particularly good the story like I said is super fucking repetitive and does and says basically the same things over and over again And it goes off in different directions at various points Like I said earlier, it was kind of hinted that okay the crew is going to betray dex at some point, but then they just don't and they never do anything with that or uh How androma has that one flashback where she's with kaylee and kaylee dies multiple times and we never learn anything new about it or how basically every character Has at least one moment where they wake up from a nightmare and it's stupid every time because we always know it's fake It's mostly androma, but nor lira and dex also all wake up from nightmares. So That's basically every pov character Uh, like I said two authors wrote this It feels like there was absolutely no coordination between them And even if there was no coordination between them that could maybe have worked if it had been properly edited But I don't think it was I was not there for it So I can't say for certain but it really doesn't feel like it was properly edited The lead characters are overwritten and by the leads I mean dex and androma because like I said they just have Way too much backstory for people who are so young like both of them Were trained to be these super cool elite soldiers And they had experience being an elite soldier and they were scripted that title for something And they both had to go off and be independent Maybe not fugitives in dex dex's case, but they had to go off and do their own thing And they had multiple Romantic relationships before the story starts that still affect them And they both feel guilt about stuff that happened in their past And they're finally trying to uh Redeem themselves and get their old titles back like that's just a lot of stuff there In my opinion A character is overwritten when their backstory cannot be summarized pretty simply Like uh, for example, one of the best characters I've read in The past several years is dalin arc holen from the stormlight archive and without getting into too much detail His backstory is basically that he was the younger brother of a warlord He developed a reputation as being a fierce warrior But also someone who killed a lot of people who didn't really deserve killing Uh, and then he met someone who caused him to kind of mellow out a little and then there was some sort of Tragedy which caused him to completely break down and become an alcoholic And then his brother the king was killed And so he found out, you know what? I have to step up now and become a better person to help Calm things down after this mess that I kind of helped create Comes back to bite everyone in the ass. Hopefully that's not too spoilery. I apologize if it is but Basically, yeah, that's a pretty simple backstory when you get down to it Uh, even if like once you get into the details. Yeah, it's very complicated because a big chunk of oath bringer is dedicated to that But you know, he's not overwritten because okay, it all ties together and makes sense whereas Androma and dex, I think If you had cut out a couple of the things that happened to them or at the very least just made them older Then it would have been fine, but it's It just doesn't work on any level The side characters are both over and underwritten like mostly talking about lira in that sense because She has a similar problem where she's really young but her backstory goes over a bunch of different things That it doesn't really need to go over Uh, but she also doesn't have that much personality in the present Like I will say that dex and androma kind of have a little bit of personality Even if androma is like bordering on being a marysu mostly just because of like The way everyone treats her and how oh how dare you hurt the protagonist, but the protagonist can hurt you um But other characters just don't don't have that much to them, you know, even if those two do do And it kind of feels like the authors keep pointing at stuff and saying that's cool But without giving any reason for why it's cool like androma fights with these two swords That's cool. But like why does she fight with those two swords? She her nickname is the bloody baroness. That's cool It kind of is but like why is she called the bloody baroness? You know, usually you have to have a specific story behind something like that Otherwise it just feels tacked on which is exactly what it is The only thing in this book that I genuinely liked was nor because I think she's uh I'm not gonna say she's a solid villain, but she's a solid foundation for a villain if nothing else She does have a pretty good motivation for doing what she's doing. She does have some personality And while they did screw up a little bit at the end with the introduction of her powers I think that that could work maybe in a future sequel, which I'm not going to read Overall this book I I don't hate it. You know, it's just a waste of paper. You know, I uh I can't summon that visceral fire up within me that I get with certain books. This is just like, yeah, it's uh Stupid and it's it's a mess You know, like there's no better word for it. It is a fucking mess It feels like a first draft Which was written by like seven different people all trying to cram their own ideas in there And it was never cleaned up in any way The most fun I had with it was reading a couple of those dumb funny lines that I read to you guys Other than that, I was just kind of like Yeah, okay, let's let's get this over with or I was bored. I wasn't necessarily bored the whole time But I wasn't like into it that much. I was just going through the motions of reading it I I'll admit I did finish it fairly quick. I think it was 10 or 11 days so like a week and a half And this is around 550 pages. So That's that's a decent pace which is hard for me to do when I truly think something is boring and terrible. So I mean, I guess there's that, you know, it's not confusing the way it's written for the most part Like at times for the most part, I would say it's average Which is not exactly praise, but you know, there's only a few points where it dips below that and overall like I can't say I'm not surprised because I didn't really read or watch any reviews of this before I film this I'm probably gonna go out and watch some now because I'm curious how other people feel but like What did you expect from a youtuber's book? You know, I I think by now Uh, we've started to realize that once you reach a certain level of fame You are pretty much guaranteed to sell at least a little bit Like this book probably sold decently well even with the shitty reviews I can't say that for a certain night. I don't know like It says number one new york times best-selling authors sasha olsberg and lindsay comings, but maybe that's for other stuff Oh, hey fun fact on the cover of this book There is a review from sarah j moss saying it's a whirlwind of out of this galaxy adventure, which is uh Not exactly glowing praise coming from her, but overall, yeah, I just I don't think they had much of a chance to Make this work. Anyway is like a pretty much every youtuber book that's ever come out has been absolute shit And one day someone will probably Break that cycle, but it hasn't happened today. And I don't think there's any greater point. I can glean from that just that Zenith is not very good. I didn't like it Don't read it. Don't waste your time on it Ah, uh, yeah, okay. Um, patreon patrons give people money. Um, the ten dollar enough We have oppo savelain and olivia ray and avatumor brother santotes christopher quintin deanna day him embiss joel car cat kitsune kevin jang Liza rudikova madison lewis benet microphone sad martigan tobacco crow tom beanie They victus you guys are all cool other names are um, you you're also Awesome. I couldn't I couldn't do this without you. I swear you guys are the best. I love you so much You please thank you for watching if you uh, uh, donate to my patreon. You get rewards and and stuff Uh, if you like video comment subscribe and uh, follow me on social Goodbye