Hi there!  This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so a couple of things before I really get started. One, this was originally going to be the whole rest of the series. Like I was originally hoping to do it in two parts, but I'm probably going to have to split it into three. And the reasons for that are because, one, these next two books, which are Queen of Shadows and Empire of Storms, you can see them, they're not short, okay? This is about 650 pages and this one's pushing 700. Like, they're long-ass books, so I wouldn't have been able to get anything out for like another month if I had to stop and read the next two. Also, I kind of wanted to make parts two and three shorter than part one because that was an hour long. And, well, some people just don't like to watch that sort of thing, so I was hoping, okay, let's make this like 30 minutes or 40 maybe. And that was going well at first with Queen of Shadows, but once I got into Empire of Storms, that was a lot worse. And I have a few more things to say about it. So basically for part one, I had about four pages of notes to talk about and I wound up being an hour of this one. I also have four pages of notes. So I'll try to make it a little bit shorter, but you know, we'll see how that goes. And finally, I have learned a couple other things about the series and the way it was originally supposed to be, which I'll talk about a little bit as we go on. And I do know that I was mispronouncing some of the words last time, which I apologize for and I'll fix it this time, but, you know, in my defense there was no pronunciation guides, so...  Well, these got a hell of a lot worse. So let's just stop waiting around. Let's go. So if you remember last time, the last book ended with Selena essentially just acknowledging to herself that, yep, I'm the fey queen. I'm the arrow fire or whatever. She got Rowan to swear a blood oath to her. Now he serves her. The other guys found out how the King of Otterlin got rid of magic and Dorian got captured and got a collar put on him, so now he's possessed by a demon. Aedion got arrested and Manon, the witch, which I was calling her man in last time, sorry, but Manon just kind of did things and did training stuff. There wasn't much of a climax to her story arc. So Queen of Shadows immediately starts off with letting us know that Dorian is still alive, that the Dorian inside his head is not controlling the body, his demon is controlling his body, but he's still alive, and that immediately robs any tension that we might have had later in the story because later on they're talking about like, no, we have to kill him. Well, he might be alive in there. We should try and they're like, no, we have to kill him.  That immediately robs all the tension, so cool. And then it immediately cuts to Selena in the vaults because she's looking for her old assassin master because she realized that an old necklace that she used to have was actually a word key and they needed to get rid of all the demons and shit, and he still has it. But Selena is also Alen now. Okay, here's the thing. I get that Alen is her real name. Like, I understand that Selena was something she changed it to, it was a pseudonym, whatever you want to say about it. I understand that, and I understand that she has more accepted her identity as Alen as the queen, but here's the thing, the narration calls her Alen 2. Alright, so after three books of getting used to her being Selena, now it's Alen, and so it just feels really awkward in the narration at first, and granted, after like a hundred pages, a hundred fifty pages, I got used to it, but the fact that there has to be that transition just feels weird and kind of stupid, and I feel like it would have been much better if they just continued calling her Selena, and like her public name was Alen, but all of her friends and everything just kept calling her Selena because that's what they knew her at, whatever. God, I'm already doing this much, and I'm only like ten pages in. So she's in this like underground den of like vice and criminals and stuff to meet her old assassin master, and honestly, it's just like I get that it's supposed to be dark, but it's just it just comes across as feeling more edgy than dark, and so I can't take it seriously, like listen to this short excerpt. She flipped her gaze in the direction turned indicated both sides of the vaults were lined with alcoves, teeming with whores, barely curtained off from the crowds. She skipped over the writhing bodies, over the gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed women waiting to earn their keep in this festering shithole, over the people who monitored the proceedings from the nearest tables, guards and boyers and fleshmongers, but there tucked into a wall adjacent to the alcoves were several wooden booths. Like, see what I mean? It just feels a little, I don't know, it's too much, and that's only one paragraph. You get a few little excerpts like that throughout the description of the vaults, and that kind of ties into an issue I have with this book as a whole, and that is sometimes the environment's description is good, but other times it just goes way over the top with it, and it makes every single environment that they're in be like the coolest, most over-the-top thing ever, or the darkest, most terrifying, most evil thing ever, and so when you get to much more dramatic moments, or moments that are supposed to be more dramatic, it doesn't really have anywhere to go, and so you just get this flat line of emotions rather than ups and downs.  So, Aylen, which remember is Selena, meets up with Ereben, her master, and he kind of knows everything about her now, like he knows, oh, you're the fire witch lady, you want your necklace, he doesn't know that it is word key, so he doesn't know it has power, and she wants to prevent him from finding out about it, but she does tell him that she wants it because it's an heirloom and has sentimental value, yadda yadda. Okay, that all makes sense, and he says that he wants her to help him capture a volg, which is put demon-possessed person that the king is using as soldiers, he wants her to help him capture one of those, and if she does that, then he'll give her her amulet. Okay, that's fine. What's a little bit less fine is that he makes it clear that he really wants to have sex with Aylen, like he calls her beautiful and kind of touches her a little bit inappropriately and just makes advances on her, which would be weird enough as is, and maybe wouldn't be enough to really comment on, because, you know, he is the villain, so this is portrayed as a bad thing, but at the same time, like he raised her, basically, from the time she was eight years old, until now, when she's about 18 or 19, and so at this point, Arobin is a groomer, which is it's more creepy than, and not like evil villain creepy, it just feels a little off-putting and a little gross, so cool, whatever. Oh, yeah, and while they're down there, Aylen also sees Kael, which remember is that old captain of the guard who she wasn't loved with for a while, but now she hates him, because cool. And anyways, she agrees to Arobin's terms and there's a fight down in the vaults, and she runs off, and she doesn't have magic anymore, because she's back on this old continent, and which means that the training montage that took up the majority of the last book was kind of pointless, but alright. So Aylen finds some rebels that are in the city, and Kael is among them, and she makes it clear that, like, yeah, I take this guy now, or both in her monologue and in their conversations, and their kind of arguments about it goes on way longer than it needs to, and anyways, they agree to work together at the end, and he gives her an address in the slums, which it's not a huge deal, but the fact that slums in this world apparently have addresses is weird to me. So they talk a little bit more there at the hideout, and Kael kind of lets it slip to Aylen that he knows how to bring magic back, and she asks him how, but he refuses to tell her, because one, he doesn't trust her all of a sudden, and two, he hates magic now. Okay. Which, I mean, I know that she hid her identity from him, so he might distrust her for that reason, but at the same time, like, if she revealed her real identity, she would have been executed, so is he really gonna hold that against her? Okay, and the fact that he hates magic now makes no goddamn sense, because he basically says, like, well, if we go back to the way we were 10 years ago, then we're gonna be at the mercy of magic users. We're gonna be at the mercy of shapeshifters and fey and shit, and that really doesn't make sense, because one, magic is already still there. It's just, it's monopolized by King Otterlin, or the King of Otterlin, and all of his demon forces, so freeing it is really only going to help you, okay? That's not going to hurt you in any way, and two, they never ever mentioned, like, magic users being, like, an oppressive upper class or anything before this, so I don't know, that seems stupid, and also it's only been 10 years since magic was gone, okay? It's not like society is completely restructured or anything. It's just, it's just, it's just a dumb arguments that they have that the author threw in there in order to stretch out the story and try and add some small level of conflict in the beginning and middle parts of the book, because not much happens there. But anyways, while they're arguing, they basically make a plan to save Aedion, who remembers Aalyn's cousin, who was captured at the end of the last book, and to save Prince Dorian, who, like I said, has the collar on him, and okay, fine. At least shit's getting moving now. So then the story shifts over to Manon for a little while, and it's just her hanging out with witches, preparing the army to go out and do shit, but never actually going out and doing shit, and she kind of does nothing, and she's really annoyed because one of the King of Otterland's lackeys is there, his name is Duke Parrington, and he's kind of in charge of things, and she hates that she has to do what a human says. All right, whatever. The only interesting bit from this whole thing is the revelation that witches are part demon. Like, apparently their race was created when the demons came through and they had children with fey, so they're like half-fey, half-demon, and nowadays witches are, they're all women, but they reproduce by having sex with human men occasionally, and all their children are always girls, and just, I just want you to remember all that, because not only is it actually kind of cool, it's like one of the few bits of world-building that is in this that I actually like. In fact, all the bits of world-building that I like are revolving around the witches, but it's just, just remember, because it becomes relevant later, and then it cuts to a new character whose name is Elid, and she was just some girl who was a noble in pterosin, and now she's basically a slave, she's being used as a servant in Morath, which is their base of operations for the witches, but apparently she's also part witch, which, if you remember what I just said about how the witches reproduce, makes no sense, because they reproduce with human men, but they're always witches, so and it mentions that her mother was descended from witches, so she, even though her mother was human, she's witch- like, it just doesn't make any sense, it's a huge plot hole, which says to me, yes, this was a first draft, and you're probably gonna hear me say that a couple more times throughout these, just, God, I just, the biggest thing about all this is that I just don't care, okay, I don't care about what Menon's doing, I don't care about what Elid's doing, they're just characters who came out of nowhere and are doing their own thing completely disconnected from the main plot, which I, I mean, I don't care about it, because these books are terrible, but that's what you're supposed to care about as the reader. So, Aylin, while she's hiding out in the slums, gets a visit from an old, not friend, but an old colleague named Lissandra, and Lissandra is also sort of a worker for Ereben, because the thing is, he's not just an assassin master, he's also like this major crime lord, which, okay, that makes sense, like, you know, he has his hand in assassinations, smuggling, robbery, prostitution, that sort of thing, and Lissandra is a prostitute who was kind of forced into it, and they make it clear throughout this that she has a lot of debt to pay off, that's the only reason she's doing it, and it's kind of traumatizing for her, and honestly, I'm making it sound more interesting than it is, it's not that interesting. But basically, while they're talking, Lissandra basically just comes up to Aylin and warns her about, Ereben is bad, okay? He's like evil, and you shouldn't trust him, which is stupid, because not only did Aylin already know that, but the audience already knew that, like, I get the feeling they just couldn't think of a better way to introduce Lissandra's character, but anyways, they argue for a bit, and they make it clear that they just didn't like each other before Aylin got captured and sent to the mines for a year, like, they make it clear even before then they didn't like each other that much, but they kind of sort of become friends at this point, and they become allies, let's say, and they just, they get a little bit more of an understanding for each other, which might have had more impact if it didn't happen all over the course of like 30 pages, but whatever, this book just keeps adding more and more stuff, it's just, it really doesn't need to be here.  Now that's not like a terrible plan or anything, like I can see the thread of logic to it, but the thing is as a reader, we were, as readers we were not told about the powder beforehand, nor were we shown any sort of planning process for Aylin doing this, so we had no idea what she was doing going in, and we just get this surprise at the end, but again we didn't know about the powder, so rather than being, oh okay, they use that in a clever way, it becomes, oh okay, they use this new thing which I've never heard of to solve their problems, like that is on the same level as if a character was fighting and they discovered they have a new magic power that they never had before, like that's on the same level only it's not with combat. So while they're running off, Dorian possessed by a demon comes after them, Aylin tries to kill him and is stopped by one of Kayle's friends and she just gets yelled at by him, and okay, like I was saying before, we the audience know that Dorian is alive, but one Kayle thinking that he's still alive is kind of stupid, and we get the impression throughout this that Kayle is like desperately trying to convince himself of this even though it makes no sense, because he thinks, oh Otterlin needs a king and we can't just let the line die off, but the thing is Dorian has a brother who is barely ever mentioned in the series, but he has one, so I mean if you're really that concerned about whatever, and honestly like just Aylin's idea where like, no he's a very dangerous threat to us now, we have to kill him makes way more sense than his, and it's just forced contrived conflict to pat out the running time, that's all it is. So Arobin tries to convince her to help him capture a ball and she kills it instead, and he's upset and that's it, I probably didn't even need to mention that but whatever it happened. So Aylin while she's spying on the demons goes after Avalg and tracks it into the sewers, and she sees that one of the gargoyles which from the glass castle is alive and it's moving around and she's like, oh okay it's a demon, but the thing is she gives it a name sort of, just listen, reports the thing hissed through a mouth of dark stone teeth, word hound, that's what she would call it, even if it didn't look remotely like a dog, she had the feeling that gargoyle thing could track and hunt as well as any canine and obeyed its master well. And here's the thing, how did she get that information? Like it'd be one thing if she was like, oh I read in a story about these things once and so I know this little bit of information about them, I know what they're called, but she just like gives it a name for really no reason, word hound which, okay cool that's fine, I personally would have just called it gargoyle but whatever that's fine, and then they keep that name throughout the rest of the books and she also turns out to be right about it tracking and senting and everything, it's so fucking clumsy, it's so amateurish, it's just, whatever. So she hangs out with Aiden at their hideout for a while and I wouldn't bring this up except that Aiden every time like his thoughts are going towards Ailen, he's thinking about how pretty she is, like it's describing her as being beautiful, it's like describing her hair as beautiful, describing her face as beautiful, all that, and I wouldn't think twice about it except that he's her cousin so that's a little weird. So then they're hanging around and it turns out Rowan is back, the fey that swore a blood oath to Ailen, like she left him behind because she didn't think he'd be able to function properly without magic, well he came after her anyways and she really wants to fuck him because she loves every man that she comes into contact with, because think about it, before this series even starts and she mentions this couple of times she had a guy named Sam who she was in love with and then Dorian she was in love with for the first book and then it immediately went over to Cale and now it's at Rowan and so she just loves every man she comes into contact with and here's the thing, here's the thing, real people, you do sometimes fall in and out of love with people in real life, I get that, but the problem is as a reader, as the audience, we just don't connect to it that much if it keeps happening because it happened with Dorian and it didn't have that much impact so then it happens with Cale and it has a little bit less impact and then Rowan has less impact because it's just happening over and over and over again with the same character so it just really shoots the romance subplot in the foot when you do that oh god, I've been filming for over 25 minutes already, shit so Lysandra is talking to them a little bit and she reveals that she's a shifter but you know she couldn't use magic anymore she's basically an animorph, you know she can turn into animals, turn into other people she can just change her appearance at will, cool, whatever then they catch a demon with no trouble and they make to bring it to Ereban they really have no trouble with it, is the thing this is supposed to be a really powerful soldier that is way stronger than most humans and they just catch it without any trouble, that's the thing if it had been difficult, if they had had to plan a little bit, if it had been hard for them that would have been one thing but it just makes the demons seem less dangerous and less intimidating than this book is obviously trying to make them and also throughout a lot of this, Rowan and Eileen have telepathy basically basically they will look at each other's expressions and then the narration will have this whole thing of what they're thinking and Eileen looked at Rowan's expression and then it was as though he was saying with his eyes, blah blah blah and now that's actually pretty common in books like don't get me wrong, that's fine if you do it once but the fact is that they do it Rowan will say one thing, say one thing and then Eileen will say something back and then he'll say something back like do you people have fucking telepathy? my god this is just stupid and it does that a lot in this book it doesn't really do it in the next one I don't think but it's just, god there's so many little things that make this book even worse than the first three because the first three were bad, don't get me wrong but this one, not only do they add a bunch of unnecessary shit to pat it out and make it long as hell but they just keep adding little things like that that are super fucking dumb and don't worry, we'll find big things that are dumb too later on but Jesus Christ so basically they bring the demon over to Arabin but they cut off the ring that was keeping the demon in the guy's body so he is a human again and they give Arabin a fake ring cool and then he tries to use it to enslave Eileen and she pretends that it's working and he makes her say I love you because you know he's a groomer and it's creepy but not in a good way and anyways then he has sex with Lissandra and while he's sleeping Lissandra kills him it's very anticlimactic because like they've spent this whole book so far and this is about two thirds of the way through I think they spend this whole book building up Arabin as not only this mastermind but also this crazy badass and they have to go and do this whole elaborate plan to kill him but it turns out in the end the plan is just yeah we're going to have someone stab him while he's sleeping whatever so anyways they read off Arabin's will not long after that and it says that he left everything to Eileen which is a huge surprise and it turns out that off screen Eileen snuck into the vault where his will was kept and replaced it with a forgery which left everything to her and then she destroyed all the copies of the original but again this happened off screen with no build up or anything and we didn't know anything about it and it's just like that could have been a fun part of the story is the thing that could have been like a miniature heist subplot that they have to go through and then when we get to the will we see their plan pay off and it's like a satisfying moment but the thing is that one this is already way too long so that would probably involve cutting out some of the romance shit and two this author seems way more preoccupied with surprising us than she is with actually making a story that fits together and a structure properly so anyways Lissandra still has debt and apparently her debt gets jacked up because the person she owes debt to was expecting money from Arabin and made purchases and now she owes money and it's like I don't think that's how debt works but whatever and the thing is Alen owns like basically a country's treasury worth of money now why not just pay off Lissandra's debt? like I feel like you can just do that because they're talking about it and Lissandra's like yeah my debt's higher now but it was worth it to see the look on her face why not just pay it off and like she does pay it off later on in the book but seriously why not just so then Menon is hanging out in Morath still and you might remember from the first book there was this character named Caltain and she was actually in the second one as well but I just didn't mention her because she doesn't do much there and she was just this noble lady that hated Selena and then got arrested and then she got a demon put in her she has the collar and everything and she apparently can use this thing called Hellfire which is just black fire which doesn't burn whatever it's not that important but I mentioned it so yeah here we are and then Rowan and Alen are still hanging out and Rowan is kind of just whining about her being mean because we need some sort of conflict like I said it's just God this is just draining to even remember and while the Hellfire stuff is going on basically they start doing some experiments with the witches that Menon is kind of upset about but she still allows to go through with and basically they want to implant vulg babies into the witches so that they'll give birth to like demons um ok that makes sense at all it seems a little weird that Menon would put up with it but whatever and then another Fey who if you remember Rowan was a servant of Maeve who was the Fey Queen and she had like a little cadre of personal guards who were all blood sworn to her and basically another one named Rowan comes and finds them and he wants the word keys basically because Maeve is looking for them and he thinks that if Maeve gets them then the power is going to kill her so basically he wants to find them and destroy them so she never does because he is still somewhat loyal to her and he thinks he is doing the best thing for her um ok fine so him and Rowan agree to swap the amulets word key for this ring that he has which is supposed to make the wearer immune to being possessed by vulg cool and Rowan trades him for it but it's actually a fake amulet so they still have it so Lissandra gets captured and kidnapped by the king of Otterland's forces because I guess they found out she was a magic user and he wants her or something but then they take her off into like this forest where they meet up with the witches and this is the first time that Manon actually runs into the main cast of characters so you know I'm glad we are finally tying that fucking plot thread in here but we didn't need to spend all the hundreds of pages on it that we did but anyways they go to rescue Lissandra they do it and then as they are running Alyn fights Manon and even without her magic she still manages to not immediately die so I'm like again this character is like really OP stupidly overpowered but whatever and Manon winds up getting trapped and about to die in a collapsing temple and Alyn saves her for no reason really so Manon is going around with her witches thinking about stuff and one of her witches just tells her a story about how she got pregnant like 70 years ago because remember they are all like 100 years old at this point and she gave birth to a stillborn which is apparently a big failure in witch culture so she got ostracized kind of and severely punished by Manon's grandmother and Manon's like man my grandmother is like evil as shit which yeah every time we see her grandmother in this she's like just over the top evil and over the top cruel and over the top just violent to her subordinates to the point where I'm really just wondering why the fuck they didn't follow her at all why did they do what she says but you know whatever I guess this is Manon just learning to be empathetic or something I don't care oh yeah and I should mention that while this is happening Manon speaks to Dorian possessed by a demon a little bit and the demon inside of him is freaking out because she has golden eyes and that's like the sign of the vault kings but Manon also realizes that Dorian is still alive in there the demon isn't just all that's there which again might have had some sort of impact if we the audience didn't already know that so we cut back to Kayle a little bit and him hanging out with one of his rebel friends and she's like his girlfriend now because we needed another fucking love triangle you know we started off with Aalyn, Dorian and Kayle and then Dorian left so that died off and then Rowan got added in there so we had another one but then her and Kayle kind of broke up and then Kayle has another girlfriend so we have like four overlapping love triangles and this one's being brought back from the dead and it just who fucking thought this was a good idea so Manon leaves a message letting them know that Dorian is alive cool and then Aalyn finally finally finally infiltrates the castle but there's still a hundred pages left so I just okay cool whatever so basically Aalyn starts fighting the king and Dorian while all her friends are kind of like down in sewers and stuff fighting demons and demon soldiers alright that's kind of cool and then Aalyn gets stabbed by Dorian but she manages to slip the ring that she got from Lorcan on him which makes you immune to the fog and it sort of short circuits the demon and cracks the collars so Dorian comes back and then they manage to blow up the tower which oh yeah I forgot to mention earlier they find this big source of this thing called Hellfire well it's basically just dragon fire from Game of Thrones so it's stuff that you burn and it sort of explodes and like okay whatever like they find it and we weren't really told that it existed beforehand but you know whatever they put it around the clock tower in order to blow it up and they also while they were down there they found the tomb of King Gavin who was another king of Otterlin who threw out the demons like a thousand years ago and they're like wait a minute he did something bad but we don't know what it was whatever and anyways they blow up the tower so now magic is back and Dorian and Alaina or Alen excuse me fights the king and they manage to defeat him but but but but but but but but but but here's the thing before he actually dies the king sort of softens up has a total personality shift and he starts acting nice again he's like oh Dorian you're alive and they're like wait what's going on here and he's like oh I was possessed by a demon the whole time okay so him and Duke Parrington remember this guy with the witches hanging out there they apparently just found some demons that were locked away and accidentally freed them and they got possessed and Parrington is actually the boss because he's possessed by the king of the demons and so the king the king the king the king he was just doing all of this stuff not because he was evil but because he's possessed and they just revealed this at the end because we're in a JRPG now he's a JRPG villain now and okay he didn't have any personality before he was just evil dude but at least he was an evil dude who was just evil you know he didn't really have an excuse for it and now he has a kind of excuse for all the shit he did and you don't have to hate him or feel bad for him because now we're shifting villains and now the demons are the real villains as opposed to the king being the real villain who's just using the demons to do his bidding okay that's all stupid enough as is but apparently what happened is that the king knew that the demons were gonna make him hunt down magic users and turn them into soldiers and all that so in order to try and protect them he took over for a little bit and he was the one that ordered all the towers built to suppress magic and not only was he able to do that without the demons finding out about it but he was able the demons didn't find out why he did it for ten years like they never found out why he did it and I just okay okay that's really stupid okay if you're gonna use the excuse they's possessed by a demon that makes no sense and plus he completely failed anyways because they still found magic users by looking at their genealogy just looking at their lineages they were able to figure out okay this person had magic in their bloodline so let's take them and they were still able to make their soldiers and I will give this one thing though it does offer an explanation for why Dorian still was able to use magic even with the towers around it's apparently because the king used his blood in the spell so his family would be immune from it that makes sense I'll give it that little scrap of help God we're more than 40 minutes into this shit God damn it ugh so they destroy the castle when they blow everything up and it's like actually shatters and Elin just makes fire on all the glass shards before it hits the city so it just makes this giant wall of glass or like a frozen tsunami of glass which again is like kind of a cool image and actually while all this is going on there's also like you know it cuts back to other fighting with the rebels and once Lissandra gets her powers back she is able to like shift into animals and stuff instantly and she uses it to go killing people which is kind of cool actually so ok here's the thing it's an almost ok climax and then at the end Elin just goes back to Tarasin and stuff and they're like oh man we're still going to have to fight demons and shit well let's be careful and also back at Morath Coltain sort of breaks free of her control but she's so angry that she's like I'm just going to destroy everything and she warns Menon and some of the witches and Elid to like run away but she also cuts open her arm and gives a stone to Elid and Elid doesn't know what it is but it's pretty clearly a word key cool and she's like just be be careful take this to Selena because I owe her and then she blows up Morath and kills most of the people there ok here's the thing even if we ignore everything else about this this was pretty clearly obviously meant to be a trilogy to begin with because this is book 4 book 1 I actually described as feeling like it was a prologue and then books 2, 3 and 4 are very obviously a trilogy because the first one is Selena just working for the king not really liking it and then at the end she just finally commits to ok yeah I'm going to fight against this dude and we find out about her real identity and then the second one is like the dip in the trilogy where it's mostly just preparing for the real final battle and finding out some more vital information and just getting stronger training etc and then this third one this is pretty clearly the climax to the original story and I don't know if I mentioned but this was originally supposed to be a trilogy so it's very easy to tell because like they beat the bad guy they bring magic back they free all the kingdoms that were under the bad guys control yeah that's that's pretty clearly the end but it also goes oh no the real puppet master was this guy so they can stretch it out more so the thing is if this if the book had ended here like if it had ended at book 4 and they cut out the stuff about the demons being in charge and all that then it would have been bad ok it would have been a bad series but it wouldn't really have been noteworthy bad it would have just been like yeah bad young adult fantasy if they had cut out the first book and we arranged some stuff so that it was a proper trilogy and they cut out some of the unnecessary bits it would just be your average well below average young adult fantasy it really wouldn't be anything to write home about but the fact that it goes on this long and that it's this obviously stretched out just for the sake of money and for the sake of making more shit that's where it really starts to fall and now that I'm going to get into book 5 empire of storms just well you'll see what I mean so I will say that even though I have an actual physical copy of it here I didn't actually read this one I listened to the audio book because the thing is like I was just I read like 40 pages of it and I was just so done I could not take it anymore so I got the audio book and that one was pretty long it was about 25 hours but I was able to get through it while taking care of other business so it was a little bit easier to get through for the most part so I guess if for whatever reason you still want to read these books I guess just audio books so this one starts off with a flashback with Queen Elena who if you remember Selena back when she was Selena met her in the catacombs of the glass castle and she kind of helped her out and King Gavin who I mentioned a little bit earlier it's them fighting the demons and it's really a retcon because you know we had heard that they banished the demons and they banished the king but in this they mentioned like okay we can't actually kill the king so we're just going to lock him away for a little while and it's just it's just a retcon that's all it is and then once we get into modern day it starts off with Elid in the woods and she meets the Fae Lorcan and they argue a bunch at first but then they decide their friends and they want to travel together and they're going up to Terrison because Elid needs to bring the word key even though she doesn't know it's the word key to Eileen just whatever cool that actually takes up a pretty significant chunk of the book by the way it's just them traveling together so Eileen and company go to Terrison and they meet with some of the lords there and they try to be like hey I'm the rightful heir to the kingdom I need to you need to recognize me as queen so that we can gather everything together get our resources all squared up so that we can fight the demons properly but the lords mostly just decide that they dislike them and they're like no we're not going to recognize you as queen which is kind of weird because this series seems to be leaning pretty hard into the divine right of kings argument which I'm not going to really get into because I already have a video about that but basically this series the well all the monarchs are descended from lines that have ruled for like over a thousand years and the certain bloodlines do have like actual magical powers that other ones don't and certain bloodlines are immortal or partially immortal so like this seems to lean really hard into that whole divine right of kings yes they were chosen by the gods they are in charge of shit so it seems weird that they would go against that but whatever like I said we need conflict so they argue a bunch and just whatever and then Selena I'm sorry Aylin see this is what I mean okay the narrator the narrator needs to stick with one name for the main character okay you can sometimes get away with switching names for smaller minor characters but this is the fucking protagonist we spend a lot of time with her okay so Aylin and her friends go off and retake a city which was part of Terrison but it has been occupied by Otterlin soldiers even after their king died and everything and even though Dorian is the king now and I feel like he can just tell them to leave whatever cool so Dorian is back in Rifthold being the king and he doesn't like being the king very much and the witches under the orders like the king of the demons who was controlling Carrington he orders them to go there and just wreck the city and Dorian's there and he tries fighting but he's like oh it's hopeless and Rowan shows up and he's like hey we gotta get you out of here so he takes them and they run off and they argue a bunch because you know everybody argues in this oh god I still have a lot of notes left the simplest way I can think to describe why this series is so bad is that it's a pretty simple story at the end of the day like it really is you know it's people rebelling against evil demon king and then it later changed into ok we're just fighting these evil demons like it's just the bad guys are just evil and the good guys just need to defeat them it's really not complicated it's a simple story but it's trying to become a complex story by being told in a complex way ok they're trying plot twists they're trying to make us surprised by having a lindu shit off screen and then have it just pop up out of nowhere they're trying to have a whole bunch of different characters telling the story from a whole bunch of different angles but when you look at a simple story from a bunch of different complex angles it doesn't make it a complex story it just makes the lead and lorkin are traveling and they take just forever to do anything like hundreds and hundreds of pages of them just traveling ok they're with a carnival and a lead really wants to fuck lorkin and a lorkin really wants to fuck a lead it's just that's what happens ok cool so alyn and company try to get pirate help from this pirate lord who just hangs out on islands and he controls his own city and everything skulls bay which is fine and then they also mention they're like oh this old noble family used to run things here but they're they're gone and I I don't know whatever it happens and they just fucking argue about this for forever like it's just alyn apparently destroyed some of his ships back when she was still selena and freed a bunch of his slaves and he's upset about that and so he doesn't like them and he also just doesn't want to fuck with demons which is kind of fair honestly and so he's just like I'm not helping you guys I'm doing my own thing I'm staying away from this and they try and convince him and he doesn't do it and they try and convince him he doesn't do it for seriously forever like I cannot describe to you how long this takes unless you really see for yourself just how much of this book is taken up by nothing happening also apparently mave has an armada and she's coming over the ocean to this continent yeah okay whatever and so they get some ships and they start doing stuff but the pirate lord still doesn't want to do anything whatever and then a goddess takes over alyn's body because cool and apparently this goddess is diana which is the goddess of the hunt and is really a spec of credit for having the characters actually have a couple of gods that had different domains and were actually mentioned a little bit in the story and didn't really play a huge role in the world building or anything but at least it was there but diana is literally the roman name for Artemis who was the goddess of the hunt so you're just taking shit from real life now and not in a fun way whatever she takes over alyn's body for a little bit and alyn throws her out and then she talks to elena and elena's like oh she's angry with you now and also apparently elena kinda sort of talks about how she was supposed to banish aroan from their dimension banish the demons from their dimension by sacrificing herself but she just was unable to do it so instead she locked him away and okay cool and apparently the gods are actually just beings from another world kinda like the demons but they're on a higher plane of existence so humans can't really interact with them that might be cool in a different series but it's stupid here and anyways elena basically just tells alyn that because she's of her bloodline she's descended from her she's gonna have to die and like we kinda get more information on that later on but that is that is the basic gist of everything I'm just giving it all right here so you know what's happening so anyways skull's bay where the pirates are hanging out gets attacked by some sea weverns and by some demons and they actually manage to defeat them because lasandra turns herself into a sea wevern and actually fights them and the other guys will like fire you know harpoons and stuff at them but honestly it's a cool battle I'll like yeah I'll give it that this is the only part of the book where I was not thinking God get it over with get it over with I was actually thinking yeah this is pretty cool so for whatever reason just yeah I liked this bit however however there is a but because it is it doesn't make any sense from a story perspective because think about this is a neutral territory the next thing to a neutral territory that you can have here which is not going to fight the demons but then arawan and his demons attack it and almost destroy it and then afterwards when they survive they're like okay I guess we're fighting against arawan now we don't really have a choice so they just gave their opponents a bunch of allies by doing this it's just it's stupid and then afterwards when lasandra is kind of beaten up and still in her sea wevern thing adian proposes to her he actually says hey it might not be today or tomorrow but I'm going to marry you and like I didn't mention it but they were sort of making eyes at each other in the last book and in this one early on because just whatever and then eilin and rowan have sex and at this point this is like just this is almost pornographic no this is straight up pornographic okay because it's very very sexually explicit and it goes on for a while like here's the thing this is young adult or at least it's marketed as young adult so I personally think that you should be able to get away with a little bit of sex and stuff like you can imply that characters had sex or you can mention sexual acts by name and but going into explicit detail about it and mentioning how she put her hand down his pants and felt velvet steel down there which by the way yes she does describe his boner as being velvet steel because this is just terribly written at the end of the day which is funny but also I was listening to this whole thing while they're fucking on the beach I was listening to it while I was at the gym with my headphones so that it was you know that was that was fun and just you get a bunch more like really sexually explicit things after that and it's just really obnoxious so then Lorcan and Aleed tell each other their secrets like Lorcan tells her who he really is Aleed tells him who she really is and she shows him the stone and it turns out oh it's a word key and he for whatever reason he like loves her now so he's like okay we'll get this to Eileen because demons and stuff seriously 80% of the book is just one character thinking about how much they want to fuck another character and then a lot of times they actually do fuck other characters like this is just porn okay actually no scratch that at least in porn I believe that the characters like each other Eureka I was just thinking I could offer to lick your if you'd let me copy your answers I agree I would love for you to lick my So while all of this is going on Manon back at Morath is you know having more tension with her commanders because of the like imprint implanting witches with demon babies which kills them and she's upset about it and she brings up with her grandmother and her grandmother knew about it but she doesn't care because she thinks if Erewan takes over then she's gonna get the witches are gonna get their kingdom back cool and then she Manon eventually fights her grandmother so that it's time for her friends to escape her 13 as they're called to escape and her grandmother wounds her really badly and while they're fighting she tells her about her parents and apparently her mother was you know she was a black beak iron teeth witch but her father was also a witch of the Kraken clan who they've been hunting down and killing Kraken for years because their enemies apparently even though in the last book they mention that all witch children were girls apparently boys are rarely born as well and at some point she killed her own father which might have meant something if Manon wasn't shown to be like a total psycho during her character introduction whatever Manon manages to escape and she lives to fly off and they find the ship where Alen and them are hanging out on and she asks them for help and they're like well we'll keep you alive but we're going to keep the prisoner as well and Dorian sees her and he immediately wants to fuck her because I already explained why so they start sailing somewhere else because Alen got like visions so so they start sailing and as they're going along the coast of Aileway it's like burning because demons are destroying shit and they help a little bit but they don't really have time to stop cool so they go to the ruins and here they finally manage to meet up with Lorcan and it leads they're like oh cool another word key and there's fighting with demons and stuff and they don't know how to use it yet but you know magical witchmere so then they're sailing and they come across the capital of another kingdom Melisand which was originally part of Otterland's empire and they decided not to break away because they're like really close to Morath and Aeroam was able to sort of like you know they were right there so they're like okay we're going to ally with them and they see this big armada and Aelen's like no don't worry about it and she like literally walks up to the leader of the armada and apparently she knows her now the woman in charge is named Ansel and apparently not only were Ansel and Aelen friends back when she was Selena the assassin not only that but after Selena got put in prison Ansel who that's another character the name starts with A by the way it makes things confusing but where Ansel went to Briarcliff which is like this human settlement where the witch kingdom used to be because apparently it's only wasteland when witches try to farm and stuff for humans it's fine which okay cool but Ansel went to Briarcliff killed the old queen managed to take over and then came over to Melisand and took over there as well okay so this character that we have never has never been mentioned we've never been told about is apparently just best friends with the protagonist and also took over these other places and also is now your ally so all these allies just come out of nowhere and are now friends with the with the main character so they now have an army when they needed an army even Rowan is fucking confused by this got this was the first draft okay this these were all first draft there was no editing process for these okay this this is what happens when you just discovery writing you realize oh characters are in a corner how do I do this throw something in there but then you don't go back to try and make it make sense this is like the most pulling out of an ass helping the main characters I have seen possibly ever so you know they continue talking for a long ass time and being like oh what are we gonna do we're talking stuff whatever and the at one point they have a brazier on a ship which I know I said I'd stop mentioning little things but that's just really stood out as stupid to me so you have this big fire on a ship which is made of wood held together with tar really does that seem safe to you so also while they're talking they mention that people are like afraid of Eilin now because they're afraid that like oh once she defeats the demons she's all powerful she might go off and conquer stuff even though she's never said anything about that and she doesn't really show any signs of cruelty or anything we're afraid of her because we need more conflicts this book is pushing 700 pages by the way we need more so Maeve and her Ramada are coming in close and it looks like they're about to fight and they're like okay we have an army but our army is like army of humans and they have immortal fey and they're more powerful magic and all that and so Rowan sneaks around and goes to various fey who he is related to and he tries to ask them for help because most of them don't really like Maeve anyways which maybe help him and then later they do so at least this at least this time when the feys start helping them out it doesn't just happen during the battle and they're like whoa why are they helping us and Rowan's like I went around before the battle doing stuff like they actually set it up this time so Aelen and Manon are talking about the magical witch mirror and apparently there's a prophecy which is like iron and fire together will save the world now I really hate prophecies in stories I just I do the only series I've ever read that did it okay was Percy Jackson but and oh we're running on memory shit so Aelen and Manon go into the mirror and there's a big long flashback where Aelina is like going through everything that we already kind of knew and I don't know it's just the lock and cast the demons out of their dimension which makes sense because you know this is a fantasy story with a perfect Mary Sue main character obviously she's gonna die at the end to save the world and even beyond that it shows that Aelina actually helps them out in the past like as a ghost she like influenced events to help them out like when she was a child and fell into the river and almost drowned that sort of went into Ereben's head and convinced him to go off near the river where he found her and cool whatever so there's a big battle with Maeve and Lessandra is cool actually during it like you know like I said she's I don't know when she became the one likeable character in this series but well she did and then Manon's 13 arrive and also help but they're still fine and then Maeve comes along and Aelin and Manon manage to leave the mirror and they get sort of captured by Maeve and Maeve is just basically just going on this long spiel about how I am evil I am going to destroy you I am going to rule everything because I am evil and I will destroy the demons and it's basically the same problem as Manon's grandmother where everything she does is so over the top evil that you wouldn't understand why anyone would follow her because there are you know blood oaths that a lot of them take so they're kind of forced to follow her but at the same time why not just avoid taking the oath so apparently Maeve knew about the prophecy and she also was trying to influence events to make shit happen cool and apparently she killed Rowan's girlfriend way back she specifically set things up to make Aylin and Rowan fall in love so that she could break her will break her spirit I just whatever she's following the prophecy too just fuck it so she tortures Aylin a bunch and eventually she manages to get Aylin taken away from them and locks her in an iron coffin and then both sides leave because they're too exhausted to fight anymore so everyone know that their queen is gone though because she's like the symbol of resistance and all that so they have Lissandra who remember shapeshifter pretend to beat her out in public and they're gonna have her and Aylin pump out babies so that they can have an actual monarch on the throne who's still from the proper bloodline even though the lords really have no interest in that apparently whatever and adion is mad about this and Rowan and Aylin apparently got married right before the battle and everything happened like you should really give us this information during or before it becomes relevant like just whatever man I don't have energy to complain about little shit anymore I gotta keep going I gotta power through so Wendlin just remember the kingdom across the ocean where Selena's other cousin rules arrives with an armada and a fleet and a bunch of other soldiers and stuff also arrive who are apparently like their assassins and thieves and stuff and apparently they were old friends of Aylin when she was an assassin and they like owe her debts and stuff so they're just agreeing to come here and fight demons again we were never told about this it just sort of happened just roll with it I guess and Rowan is made the king in all but name of Terrison because they want him to lead the battles and everything and just that's the end of Book 5 Empire of Storms so man like I said as dumb as all the stuff I brought up was it's so so much worse than you really understand because so much of it is just people arguing being dicks to each other for no reason and so much of it is just people I don't traveling people falling in love making eyes at each other wanting to have sex with each other so much of this book is just that and when you skip over all that you realize how vacuous a lot of the plot is and honestly maybe even vacuous isn't the right word it's just so incoherent so not thought out so long it's so long okay like I was saying before these would be bad if they were shorter but they would be tolerable okay and there were people that were upset that I didn't really rage at the last three at the first three books I should say and well now yeah I'm genuinely really annoyed and angry that made me read this so the first three books like I said they were bad but honestly I don't think they would have cracked my top ten with the addition of queen of shadows and empire of storms I think this breaks the top five okay this this might be worse than the fifth sorceress honestly which if if you know anything about the fifth sorceress you you know that's saying a lot but uh fuck me this did not wind up being short I swear I wanted this to be like a 30 or 40 minute episode but that's not what we got and well that's you know going on to part three now although I will say that uh book six where is it takes place about simultaneously with book five except it's about Kaol and his girlfriend off having their own adventures and I like this series think that that's pointless and you don't really need to read it so I will be skipping over that and uh tune in for part three which should be coming out in a couple of weeks I don't know exactly when but part three is kingdom of ash it is the final book and then I will be done with this series so if you watch this for thank you please like the video and comment on the video and subscribe to my channel if you haven't and thanks a bunch to my patrons especially Oppo Savilane and Christopher Hawkins Christopher Quinton Joseph Pendergraft and of course tobacco crow you guys are cool and please consider donating to my page if you aren't already and I'm very tired and my throat hurts so I'm gonna go do something else bye


Good morning, everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, coming to you live from TFNN headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida at 9 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, 30 minutes to go until that opening bell. And we got markets pretty much close to flat territory in the green, though. Dow futures right now up 22 points, trading at 25,836. S&P futures positive by four, trading at 27,95, and we got NASDAQ futures positive by 12, excuse me, trading at 71,58. Up here on the chart, we'll start it off. This is your S&P. Quite a slide yesterday, just in context. That was about 9.50 in the morning. We traded to a low at around 1 p.m. Eastern time yesterday. And from there, we're right back basically in the middle of that cascade to the downside. Jumping over to the VIX, volatility index, of course, inverse of basically what we saw on the prior chart of the S&P, volatility index spiking to 16.98 yesterday. As the market clawed back some of those losses, you saw the VIX trade back under 15, 14.37 on that VIX. Let's jump over to some of the futures markets as we await that opening bell in 30 minutes. We'll start it off with the Dow, so highs at about 4.30 in the morning of 25,886, about 70 Dow points off of that level. And again, bringing it back to yesterday for some context, basically right in the middle of that range that we fell through yesterday. NASDAQ 100, pretty similar story. We trade up to a high of about 71,68. Call it 4,430 in the morning. Currently trading at 71,51. Again, backing it up yesterday right in the middle of that case, cascade to the downside. S&P is trading at 27,93. We were up there at 27,98 earlier. And again, in yesterday's slide to the downside, right in the middle of that range. It'll be interesting to see where this market heads in 30 minutes when we get that opening bell. Crude oil, 56,80 currently. Checking out gold, 12,8734. Euro US dollar, $1,1332. In terms of what else you have happening out there in the market making waves, you have Target coming out with their earnings and beating in a pretty dramatic way as they have same-store sales of 5.3% and digital sales surging more than 25% for the fifth year in a row. The market really liking that to jump over to their chairs this morning. Target, TGT. Looks like going to open about $77. Closed yesterday at 72,67. And Kohl's also out with their earnings, KSS. Kohl's trading higher as well, $70.12. Closed yesterday, 66,47. Couple retailers trading higher this morning. Stay tuned, folks. We've got our man Larry Pezzavento coming up right now at 9 o'clock. I'll be back at 10 o'clock with Tom live programming all day at TFNN.com. Stay tuned, folks. Have a great Tuesday.