**The Difficulty of Embracing Romance as a Genre**

I want to love romanticy as a genre, but I feel like it's just not my thing. I think that's what's currently popular, and it's obvious that people don't want heavy world-building and politics in their fantasy romance. They're reading it for the romance, after all. But if you don't have some of those elements, the story is much less believable. The characters are a lot less believable too, if they live in an extremely unrealistic world, how can we suppose to believe that these characters are realistic? If the circumstances of their lives are completely unrealistic, because we didn't spend the time to think about the structure of the world that you've created and the politics and the dynamic of it.

**A Better Balance is Needed**

So I feel like I need a better balance of those things in order to actually feel an investment in the relationship between the characters. This means having a more believable world, with its own set of rules and politics. It means creating characters that are multi-dimensional and relatable. If we can't believe in the world and the characters, how can we invest in their romance? That's why I think romanticy is often lacking in this genre.

**A Personal Rating System**

I was reading Fourth Wing and The Serpent of the Wings, and I have to say that I liked the latter a little more than the former. But even with the better book, I still feel like I'm being kind of generous with my ratings. These books are not good books for me, and they don't rank very high on my list of favorite books. They're not one-star books because it's not that bad, but they're also not good, so we'll go with a rating of 2 or 2.5 out of 5 stars.

**A Personal Recommendation**

I don't really think these books are worth your time, but if you want to try them out, I suppose they're not the worst. My personal recommendation is to try something else, because there are better books out there that will give you a good reading experience. I've only read two books for this video, which I think helped a little bit, but also made it easier for me not to hate on these books too much. But even with the limited number of books, I still felt like they were lacking in terms of writing, character development, and world-building.

**The Foundation of Writing**

I feel kind of confused sometimes when books like this get so popular because I think those are things that are foundational to a good book. You need a believable world, well-developed characters, and engaging storytelling. Romanticy is no exception. It needs all of those elements in order to be truly effective. And yet, these two books didn't have them, which is why they fell flat for me.

**Future Reading Experiment Videos**

I do plan to make more reading experiment videos, but I'm not sure if I will follow the same format as this one. Maybe I'll go back to reading five books at a time, or maybe I'll stick with two like this time. It depends on the length of the books and my mood. But for now, I'm feeling like sticking with two books was the right call.

**Conclusion**

That's it for this video. I hope you enjoyed watching it, and I will see you in my next video. Thanks for watching, and don't forget to follow me on social media if you want to stay up-to-date on my latest content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen will I get to do one of these experiment videos in which I do not make fun of the  characters names you're going to be shocked I didn't hate it the second I read the word in  heat I knew exactly where we were I knew exactly what was going on this was Omega verse I've just  never heard anyone describe it as elegant you know that's just not a word I would think to you it is  quite literally just a more mediocre version of every other fantasy book you have ever read hello  hi welcome so it's been quite a bit since I've made a reading Experiment video I think the last  one I made was the calling Hoover video which was at the end of last year so it's it's been a long  time I apologize I didn't plan to take a big break from making those videos but life has just been  lifeing this year so it was kind of unavoidable but today I'm finally going back to my roots uh  with a little bit of a twist for doing something a little bit different this time around I'm gonna be  reading two of the most popular romantic books what is romanticy you may be wondering if you  don't know if you don't spend as much time on the internet as I do first of all good for you second  of all romanticy stands for romantic fantasy it's pretty self-explanatory it's literally  just fantasy books that are heavily romance based so it's less about the fantasy it's more about  the romance that's a really really popular genre right now on book talk on bookstagram on booktube  a lot of people are reading it I personally would consider fantasy romance to be one of my favorite  genres and I know there's a little bit of a debate between what is romanticy and what is  fantasy romance if I have followed the discourse Enough From what I gather romanticy are books that  are more focused on the romance and they just have a little bit of fantasy in them whereas  romantic fantasy is more of a fantasy book has a romance in it so the fantasy comes first and then  it's the romance versus the romantic book it's the romance that comes first and then it's the fantasy  elements so that's kind of the way that I've seen people make the distinction between the two  I'm more in this category I like my romance and fantasy to be a little bit balanced in the book  whereas these books are more heavily based in the romance than they are in the fantasy so that was a  mouthful but today I'm going to be reading two of the most popular books I have seen in this genre  this whole video came to being because I started reading one of these books and I had no intention  of making this video at all and then I realized I had to talk about it so I've decided to include it  in this video and I decided to just read two books in this video instead of five because if I'm being  honest with you all I don't think I can force myself anymore to sit through five full books  especially when they're fantasy books and they're like usually over 500 pages if there's a chance  that I'm not really gonna like the majority of them so I decided to just keep it to two so we  can compare and contrast and also specifically with this video it was because these two books are  the most popular ones that I've seen everywhere everybody talks about them and I really wanted to  know why people were so obsessed I wanted to do a little bit of investigative journalism for myself  if you can call this that and just see what it is that has made both of these books just completely  blow up Skyrocket to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list and just sell like crazy and just  create cult followings in such a short amount of time before we get into talking about the  books I do want to thank today's sponsor which is skillshare skillshare is an online learning  community with thousands of different classes that can help Foster your creativity they have  classes on a myriad of different topics including illustration photography animation music film and  video social media and so so much more if you're interested in learning the basics of Animation or  how to grow a social media following skillshare will have a class for that the class I'm actually  taking right now is one taught by one of my all-time favorite authors sabita here and it's a  class entirely on how to write realistic character and writing is something I've really gotten more  into this year and something I really want to work on so taking a class taught by an author  I really look up to admire and respect has been so worthwhile and I'm so excited to continue working  on it I feel like I've learned so much from this class already and it's been so helpful with my own  writing so it's making me more excited to work on my own projects and try out other classes to see  how much more I can learn so if you're interested in trying out skillshare for yourself the first  1000 people to use the link in my description will get a one month free trial of skillshare  so again thank you so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video and without any further  Ado let's get into talking about the two most popular romantic books that I read and what I  think of them alright so first up I read the one the only fourth Wing this book has been everywhere  I don't even need to tell you about it you have seen it whether by choice or against your will  you have seen this book everywhere you cannot go on Instagram Tick Tock booktube anywhere in any  book space or in any bookstore and not see this book it is quite literally inescapable from what  I understand this is the author's debut into fantasy but before this she primarily wrote  romance novels and erotica and she seems to have a very long backlist of books so she's clearly  a seasoned writer but this book from what I can tell mostly took off one because it did definitely  have a marketing budget behind it I saw a lot of promoted posts for this book to begin with  when it was first starting to blow up and then I think it just had one of those miraculous viral  Tick Tock videos where someone recommended it and it just kind of blew up and then everyone started  picking it up from there so I think that's kind of how it started to get the attention that it was  getting so I was super curious to see what I was gonna think of this I really did not expect much  at all I didn't think I was gonna hate it I didn't think I'd necessarily be obsessed with it either I  just wanted to see what everyone was talking about because the way people talk about this book it's  like it's life-altering and I know a lot of people when they recommend it preface it by saying is it  the greatest thing ever written no but I had such a fantastic time reading it I've heard that time  and time again and recommendation videos that people have made for it but what is this book  actually about fourth Wing is a fantasy novel set in a world that is kind of war-torn and we follow  around our main character Violet who is attending a war College which is basically just a military  school where she is being trained to become a soldier and potentially hopefully a dragon rider  the tagline for this book is literally graduate or die which I honestly find so funny I don't think  it's supposed to be that funny maybe it is um but to me it's hilarious I feel like that would make  a fantastic tagline for a dark Academia book like something that's legitimately criticizing Academia  or something I think that would be so funny but that's not what this book is doing it basically  just Chronicles our main characters first year at this war college and the love triangle she's in  that's pretty much the whole book will she survive this Cutthroat school and make it or will she die  so I've finished reading fourth Wing why is this book so popular you might be one wondering having  finished it I think I have a partial answer for you but mostly I also just have to say I don't  know there's no reason for this to be as popular as it is because it is quite literally just a more  mediocre version of every other fantasy book you have ever read I know that sounds really harsh I  don't think this book is horrible I really don't I just don't think it's very good either and while I  don't hate it or anything it definitely doesn't deserve the hype that it's getting because it's  just it's not some new exceptional thing it's not even just like a really good version of a story  you already really know and love it's just every single why a dystopian why a fantasy adult fantasy  new adult fantasy you've ever read think of every single Trope that's in all of those books you've  ever read and they are all in this book except they're just not nearly as interesting so I think  that the appeal of this has truly just been the fact that it is so familiar and so there's this  element of like comfort and Nostalgia that comes along with reading it I think that's appealing  to people and I can understand that I just don't get why it's so intense like why the love for this  is so intense when it's not even a good version of those stories you already know you know like  this book is quite literally a combination of acotar Throne of Glass from blood and Ash  Divergent a little bit of The Hunger Games which I hesitate saying because that's disrespectful to  the Hunger Games and like pretty much every other why a fantasy there are elements of every other y  fantasy it reads so much like an early 2010s why a fantasy book but it's a new adult fantasy this is  actually very much a thing with I think a lot of books that get really popular on book talk which  I think makes sense because the demographic there at least when book talk was first blowing up was  people who had just started reading who had just gotten back into reading after not reading for a  long time and if you haven't read a lot of why a fantasy I think you'd like this book because it's  gonna seem newer and more exciting to you but if you have read a couple of why fantasy series  this is just like those this is a book for people who don't read a lot I think that's  the thing with a lot of tick tock books like books that really really blow up on book talk  because they're pulling from very commonly used tropes so if you've read a lot I don't think  you're going to necessarily appreciate this in the same way as somebody who either this is just their  favorite genre and they only want to read things in this genre that feel exactly like everything  else they've ever read which not judging you for that I totally get it or for people who  don't read very much at all it'll seem interesting or Innovative if you don't have a lot of reading  experience behind you so you don't have exposure to a lot of these stories already and these tropes  already but if you do I don't think you're gonna be as obsessed with this I mean I could be wrong  plenty of people like it who also read hundreds of books a year but I'm just saying generally  speaking this is definitely a book for people who don't read that much you can tell in the way that  it's written in the stories it's borrowing from the overused tropes that are in this which I'm  a Trope girl I love good tropes okay but when you just see them being used again and again  especially in this way they that doesn't offer anything new or anything different or unique and  it doesn't even have to be different like I'm not looking for uniqueness in every single book that  I read just if it's done well you know that's what I'm looking for and for me this was just not done  very well I mean I just compared it to pretty much every why a fantasy and dystopian that I  don't like so the chances of me liking this were not as high but if you like any of those books  you'll probably like this too just know that it's just another version of those books so if you love  Divergent if you love from blood and Ash if you love Throne of Glass and the court of thorns and  Roses you'll probably love this if you don't like those books some things about this are better than  some things about those some of those books but overall I don't think you're really gonna like it  either you may give it like three stars and think it was okay but like overall I don't think you're  gonna love it it's like when you read a ton of fan fiction about the same couple over and  over again and you never get bored of it because you just love them so much so you'll read about  them falling in love in a thousand different ways but then you read one that's just like the exact  same tropes as all the other ones that you've been reading that you loved but this one was just like  kind of mediocre compared to those that's how I think about it anyway my overview of General  thoughts aside let's get into my personal thoughts and the specifics of why I didn't really Vibe  with this first and foremost I just want to say I went into this expecting kind of nothing I didn't  expect to love it because one it was blurbed by Jennifer L armentrout on the cover and we  all know how I feel about from blood and Ash and two I don't have that much faith that I'm going  to love most popular book talk books just the track record it's you know it hasn't been good  so I didn't have a high hopes but I didn't think I was gonna hate it I was just truly curious why  so many people were so interested in this book and why it's everywhere like why is it as popular as  it is I really wanted to answer that question for myself and I had no intention of making this video  like I wasn't even going to talk about the book until I started reading it so first let's start  with like the positives that I have to say because I do actually have a few things about this that I  did like I genuinely enjoyed the dragons because you know me I love dragons in fantasy they're like  one of my favorite elements in fantasy books if there's a fantasy book with Dragons I will want  to read it so that was definitely a big appeal for me and the dragons were easily like easily  the best part of this book by far a lot of it reminded me of like Monon and Throne of Glass  with the wyverns and that was my favorite part of the Throne of Glass series like actually the only  part of the Throne of Glass series I truly liked by the end but the second thing I did genuinely  enjoy was the disability rep in this book our main character has some kind of chronic illness  they never really name it specifically but after doing some research and looking into the author  I know that she's definitely writing from like first-hand experience as somebody who also deals  with a chronic illness and I found it to be pretty well done it felt genuine and it felt like it was  being written from the perspective of someone who does truly understand which is something I  feel like I'm always looking for when I'm reading about specific rap it's just nice to have like a  fantasy book where the main character actually has a disability and it's acknowledged it's not  vilified in some way I mean she definitely deals with like a good bit of ableism and like a lot  of bad things that people will say to her but obviously the book doesn't have that perspective  so those were the two things I actually enjoyed about this if we'd focused more on the dragons  and not necessarily on Violet's disability but on Violet as a person more so than just like a  mouthpiece to give us World building information and also just part of this romance that I did not  care about I feel like I would have enjoyed the book a little bit more if we'd gotten more like  political Intrigue and did some World building and delved into that a little bit more and had more  dragons because I will always want more dragons but yeah those are the things the elements of the  story that I found to be genuinely enjoyable but unfortunately that did not outweigh the  negatives for me so first and foremost the thing I think this book suffers from more than anything  is a lack of World building this world makes no sense like absolutely zero sense and it is so  clear when you're reading the book that it is not thought out and I get it when you're reading like  a fantasy romance you're not reading for the plot you're not reading for the world you're reading  for the romance like that's what you're here for but when you're trying to make a book that  is going to be from what I understand the first in like a very long series that includes a lot  out of like World politics and it's supposed to be really action-packed and like super high  stakes because this world is very intense and like Cutthroat and deadly you need to expand  the world a little bit because it's so illogical that it was hard to read sometimes and for a while  I feel like I was gaslighting myself being like I'm probably just thinking about this too hard  like I'm reading too much into it but I really don't think I was because can anyone explain to  me why Violet is in a war College like that's what it's called she's like in a in a military  academy basically where they're being trained to go off to fight in a war what is this war for  do they explain it a little bit but like not really they're just being trained as soldiers  and she's kind of forced into this war College by her mom at this college they're just killing off  people every single day like if you don't make it you're not gonna make it into the actual military  they just kill you off there's like a death count a death toll every day it's kind of like in The  Hunger Games where they would like announce the deaths at the end of every single day during the  games they do like the same thing that's why I compare it to that in some ways and it's like  super deadly like there are people dying left and right constantly why are they killing off  people that they could be using for their actual military that that just doesn't seem effective  also what are the politics of this world why are we fighting this war what is the war for who are  the two sides they kind of start to explain it by the end but like not not really and not clear  enough so it's really confusing what's going on and it's not because it's a fantasy book and  you're kind of confused it's because it's not well described it's just it's not well thought  out it's not well explored it's not well builds because there's like no World building you get  all of the World building through either violet or other characters just like spewing random facts at  you at really inconvenient times like they should be talking about other things but all of a sudden  they're just like telling you well back in this age this happened and that happened and then  that happened and then this happened it's really info dumpy sometimes um but you're really still  not getting any info which is confusing along with that in terms of the World building I was  very confused on the time period we were set in in this book I know it's a fantasy world so it's like  fictional it didn't make a lot of sense because the women wear corsets the word Thrice was used  at least once that might have been in context of like an old book they were reading but I don't  remember exactly it was like at the beginning but then we also use words like soum I'm not really sure where we are in time and space the other thing about it that I feel like  didn't help with the World building element and made it feel underdeveloped and also just made  the book feel very oddly paced was the fact that we had just like so many time jumps the book takes  place over the span of like about a year I think and it just jumps in time constantly sometimes  it'll be like a month passed and like nothing happened and then it's like three months later  and like nothing happened in between that time so we're just like skipping through a lot of what I  feel like is essential to you know building the world in which our story is set it was odd in  that sense the pacing was really really weird to me it made the book read very fast-paced which is  another reason I think that people really enjoyed this it's so fast-paced it took me forever to  read it because I was bored but the book itself is fast paced so you will get through it pretty  quickly there are definitely sections that are way more interesting than other sections sometimes  there's like nothing going on for so long and then suddenly everything is happening all at once and I  honestly I feel like nothing was going on for ever in this book until the very very end it was like  really low stakes despite the fact that someone's like dying on every other page which also you just  like don't care that they're dying because you don't know them anyway pretty much nothing is  going on for the majority of the book and then we like bond with the dragons we learned about  the dragons and everything that's a little bit interesting I was into it at that point then it  gets really boring again and then at the very end all of a sudden we go from doing nothing Suddenly  It's All Out War like all out War I don't know if other people felt this way when they read it but  that scene like that whole ending sequence which I think a lot of people really liked because the  ending was very high stakes very action-packed and there was just so much movement so much going on  I think people like it a lot because it's so involved but I felt like it was really really  convoluted the choreography of this fight made no sense it was like we were jumping from one  place to another with no explanation I couldn't visualize it usually when I'm reading a book or  like a fight scene or something sometimes it's a little confusing to visualize but you can kind of  like grasp where you're at I had no idea what was going on that entire fight along with all of that  this book was like I mentioned earlier because it was so similar to every other why a fantasy book  I've ever read it was so predictable there was not a single thing like I swear to you not one single  plot twist or event that happened in this book that I did not predict every single one of them  and that's not me being smart it's just because I've read the books that this book is based off  of if you have read those books you know where this book is gonna go like it's not it's it's  not gonna be some new thing you know I was just sitting there constantly rolling my eyes I was  like okay so then this is gonna happen and then it happened and I was like okay so then that's  gonna happen and then it happened so you know maybe this is on me because like I have read a  lot of otherwise fantasies so I'm used to seeing this all the time so like I I need to Branch out  and read other things which I feel like I do but I still love the Y fantasy genre and I know this  is not y a I know everyone's gonna get mad at me for calling it ya I don't care besides the sex in  this book it's it's a ya book it reads exactly like every other ya book it doesn't read like a  lot of new adult books actually which is not like something I'm knocking it for I love why fantasy  it's truly one of my favorite genres but it just reads like a y fantasies the other thing we do  have to touch on the names when will I get to do one of these experiment videos in which I do not  make fun of the characters names because in this book the main character's name her name is violet  which that's fine like there's nothing wrong with the name Violet but her last name is sorengale  it is thankfully not spelled like soaring like s-o-a-r and then Gale as in g-a-l-e  it is s-o-r-r-e-n-g-a-i-l I think I can't remember exactly the spelling but it's it's  not that exact but it's close enough and I found that to be a little embarrassing a little cringe  it was just a little too on the nose for my taste personally it's not nearly as bad as Lily Blossom  blue more America singer but Thorndale is kind of close for a dragon rider it's a little too much  and then the main love interests name which is bad for very different reasons is Zayden Ryerson  spelled with an X and like listen am I getting Petty maybe but I just hate that name that name  sounds like the main character of a Colleen Hoover novel like that's the same thing as  like Rio Kincaid or Ledger Ward like it's just a fantasy version of that because you spelled it  with an X instead of a z Zayden Ryerson is a bad name I'm so sorry I'm like not even sorry it's a  bad name I'd literally rather take a Sarah J Maas name like resand or kale or Tamlin like those are  better names than Zayden Ryerson so while we're on the topic of the two main characters the  romance is a thing we have to talk about because that's what everyone's reading this book for uh  it was fine I don't hate the romance I don't actually hate anything about this book there's  one thing I do hate which we'll get to I didn't care about the romance and if I don't care about  the Romance I'm Not Gonna care about a fantasy romance book because like that's the whole reason  you're reading the book nothing about Zayden was interesting to me nothing about Violet was that  interesting to me I will say I did not actually really hate violet she was not as annoying as a  lot of main characters and fantasy novels can be female characters because sometimes they  just write like the worst the worst main female character you've ever read about and she's like  such a pygmy and it's so annoying Violet wasn't like that I didn't hate her at all I definitely  liked her more than Zayden she was a lot less YN than some of the main characters in a lot of  those fantasy novels so I did appreciate that the romance itself like there was just really nothing  there for me I can get why people might like it I just didn't find it that interesting or unlike  anything I'd ever read before and again just like a watered-down version of things I've already seen  there were a couple of things about it that were like kind of cringed to me specifically the fact  that his nickname for her is violence which just kind of doesn't actually make any sense because  she's not violent and that's the whole point and like I don't know if that's why he calls  it there's no reason he calls her violence he just calls her violence it's supposed to be cute  for some reason I don't know I'm not really a pet name person so like I don't really like that very  much I'm not a nickname person and then there was one specific line that I wrote down that  I just found to be so so cringy which is at the very very end um but it's not a spoiler and it's  something that Zayden says and he literally says and I quote she exists and I get turned on whichto be funny that's the thing I feel like if book was a little bit more comedic and if that was said  in more of like a humorous way even if he was serious if it was set in more of a humorous way  I feel like it would have been fine it would have been funnier but he was like dead serious and I  was like oh no and then the very last thing that I want to talk about the thing that like before  this happened I was like this is fine like I don't really get why people love this so much but it's  okay like Max I'd give this book three stars it's like whatever I like it's not for me but  I can understand it's just it's okay and then this happened and then I was like no I've had enough I  don't like this book and so from there it was like very much downhill and this is unfortunately kind  of in the middle of the book so I did not enjoy a good bit of it because this happened kind of soon  and that's because we introduced a little sprinkle of Omega verse into this story so to talk about  this I'm gonna have to talk very lightly about a spoiler it's not a very like serious spoiler  but if you don't want to hear anything about this book at all in any way I'm Gonna Leave a picture  of the book cover on the screen so you can mute me until um the cover is gone and then you can come  back and listen and I'll be done talking about the spoiler but again it's a very light spoiler like  it's not actually anything related to the plot but if you don't want to be spoiled just mute me for  now so in this world people Bond with Dragons right so when you bond with your dragon you  can feel everything that your dragon is feeling like all of their emotions they can communicate  telepathically and so when you're bonded with your dragon you can feel physically when they're in  pain you can feel emotionally when they're going through something and so Violet's dragon is mated  with another Dragon one night she wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat feeling  overcome by lust and I think you know where I'm going with this her dragon is with its mate doing  things and she wakes up and they quite literally describe it as she felt like a cat in heat and the  second I read the word in heat I knew exactly where we were I knew exactly what was going on  this was Omega verse okay yes they get turned on when their dragons are turned on and so of course  she's just like overcome with these feelings and then happens happens too coincidentally  which that was another other thing there were so many coincidences in this book where she would  just happen to find Zayden somewhere or happen to run into him it's impossible for there to be that  many coincidences he was just constantly happening she'd always run into him but anyway of course she  like runs into him in that moment she's like throwing herself at him because she's in heat  because her dragon is in heat and that was that just like drove me over the edge I was like I've  had enough I go for this anymore that's you're probably wondering to yourself Hannah does this  mean you have read Omega versus fan fiction I hate to admit this online but yes I have unfortunately  read I've read one Omega verse fan fiction because I did not know what the Omega verse was and then I  I read it out of sheer curiosity because I was like what is this this is like in 2019 I think  read it out of true curiosity and now I know everything about the Omega verse unfortunately  I know too much about the Omega verse but I am kind of grateful that I did read that fan fiction  sometimes because now when I read books I can spot when the author has either read or written Omega  verse fan fiction because it's so obvious when you know the signs you can spot them from a mile away  and without a doubt this author has either read or written Omega verse fan fiction did not need  that element in this it was definitely my least favorite part of the book it did unfortunately  kind of ruin the dragons for me it was very upsetting but that pretty much covers all of  my thoughts on Fourth Wing if you're considering reading this book this is my recommendation if  you like Divergent Throne of Glass acotar or from blood and Ash and you want something that's just  like those books where you don't have to think about what's going to happen next because it's  all basically exactly the same thing as those books combine read it you'll probably like it if  you don't like those books very much and you don't like a lot of the tropes and elements that are in  those books very much I don't think you need to spend your time reading this book I don't think  you're really gonna get much out of it that's my guess obviously I cannot say every person is going  to be different but generally speaking if you're more in the side of people who enjoy these books  you'll like fourth Wing if you're not you probably won't like fourth Wing because it's just like all  of them so that's my personal recommendation I'm not going to tell you to read it or don't read it  it is up to you if you decide to read it these are just my thoughts personally I gave this book two  out of 5 Stars again I don't hate it I just don't think it's very good it's kind of like the way I  felt about acotar I did not hate acotar I just don't think it's very good but that's all there  is to say about that so on to the next book to see how that one fares alright so the next book I read  was The Serpent and the wings of night this was a book I saw a ton at the beginning of this year on  Tick Tock and on Instagram everyone seemed to be reading and recommending this saying that it was  even better than akatar which I know I'm not an avatar fan so this book is definitely meant for  fans of Sarah J Maas and that series specifically but I kept seeing it everywhere and so many people  were saying it's so much better than that series it's just so so good everyone has to read it some  of the best romanticy out there and again this is another book that I knew absolutely nothing about  before I went into it other than seeing everyone's praise for it apart from the fact that it's about  vampires I'm coming to you I think sitting in exactly the same spot I was sitting in when I  was talking about fourth wing it would seem like I haven't moved except it's been like a whole month  since I read that book and it took me a whole month to read this one I feel like that might  give you an idea of where this is gonna go I have my green juice because a girl needed energy and  my sweater just felt extremely appropriate I literally just basically crawled out of bed to  film this that just it feels like the right way to talk about this book I think so the serpent  of wings and night The Serpent of the Wings and night I'm still unsure about the number  of articles in this title I don't know how many of those there are okay The Serpent and the wings of  night that is what it's called that's the title I read The Serpent of the Wings and night did I  say it right I still don't know I posted that I was reading this book on my Instagram story and  um this was after it already posted about reading fourth wing and several people were saying they  liked it more than fourth Wing so we were curious to see what I was gonna think but they thought  that I might like it a little bit more too I will start off this whole review by saying I think you  were kind of right I do like this a little bit more than fourth Wing which is not a high bar  but I do like it a little bit more than fourth Wing I just think it's more interesting overall  um and there's like less military propaganda all I really knew about this before getting into it  was that I think it's inspired heavily inspired by the acotar series and you can tell that this book  is definitely inspired by that series however I do still think it's actually very different  I think this is more similar to from blood and Ash than it is to acotar in a lot of ways but  it also has kind of that Hunger Games Divergent dystopian element to it where there's some kind  of competition and there are tributes but I think as was the case with fourth Wing it's kind of just  the same things we've seen before reused and recycled without any kind of new commentary or  any Innovation or anything new to add to the conversation it's basically what you've seen  before except a little bit more boring I don't know it's like being transported back into 2010  why fantasy and dystopian except they rely entirely on the fact that you feel nostalgic  for that time in your life but what is The Serpent and the wings of night about did I say that right  I still don't know anyway what is this book about one of my main questions while I was reading this  book was what is this book about because it was really confusing because there's like no World  building I will say though there's more World building in this book or at least Better World  building in this book than there is in fourth wing but the bar in that was really really low  like astronomically low this one wasn't that much better it was just definitely better bear with me  I really don't understand this universe at all and I'm trying my best from what I could grasp  this takes place in a fantasy world where vampires exist and vampires exist kind of alongside humans  but they have power over humans and they are taking over their cities and destroying them  and killing off Humanity basically but the vampires are also at war with each other based  on different houses and so there's conflict within the vampire houses as well so we follow our main  character whose name I literally don't remember even though I finished this book yesterday Araya  her name is Oria our main character Arya is a human but she was adopted as a child she was  adopted by the king of the vampires Vincent like that's all I know about him his name is Vincent  he's the king of the vampires and he's kind of Ruthless he adopts her when she's young and so  we're getting her story when she's now I think like 2 21 or 22 years old so she's basically just  this human girl living in the vampire world who wants I don't think to be turned into a vampire  but somehow kind of be turned into a vampire I'm a little unclear on exactly what she wanted but  I know she doesn't want to fully stay human so she enters this competition which I'm also kind  of unclear on what this competition is exactly I know that the prize is that the winner like  the Victor literally called the victor of this competition basically gets like a wish granted  to them and she and her father Vincent want her to win and want her to get this wish but she's human  and humans don't enter this competition it's like a vampire competition so she's like the  only human in this entire competition with all these other vampires again I'm unclear on what  the competition is exactly I just know people are killing each other I don't really know why they  just are that's just kind of how it is I am also confused on how she is so strong even though she's  human we do kind of get an answer to that at the end but I'm kind of confused on why nobody else is  that confused about how she could possibly keep up with vampires on this level you know it's it's not  very clear anyway does it matter Araya enters this competition and in this competition is where she  meets our main level of Interest rain I think his name is rain but it's spelled in like that very  Sarah J Maas way with like too many extra letters and it's just confusing anyway brain is a vampire  and their competitors in this competition so it's a little bit like enemies to lovers yeah that's  kind of generally what this book is about the book gives you a Content warning at the very beginning  which I very much appreciated I thought that was really nice that they do tell you that and  there's definitely some pretty heavy stuff in this book one of the main themes of the stories essay  so just know that if you decide to read it uh do read the content warning beforehand but that is a  major theme in this story so if it's not something you're comfortable reading probably skip this one  so I do think that this book is a bit darker than something like fourth Wing fourth Wing definitely  reads a lot more like why a like I mentioned in the review for this one does read more like your  classic new adult so if you were to compare this book to any book that has good World building it  has garbage World building okay the World building is not good it doesn't make any sense it's just  not even there but if you were to compare it to something like fourth Wing end from blood and Ash  there is some World building there so I have to give it some credit it's more along the lines of  something like acotar that definitely had a little bit more thought put into the actual politics and  world of the story versus those other books that had like no thought put into those so it  wasn't good World building but it was better than some of these other books that I didn't  like I will say I would give this book a little bit more leeway because from what I understand  this book is self-published and when something is self-published it didn't go through all the  processes and all of the different people that a traditionally published book goes through several  several rounds of editing you don't know how many times the author edited the book so for a book  that's self-published I can be a little bit more lenient on it with how repetitive the story was  which was definitely one of my grievances with this book I'm not gonna look at it the same way  that I will look at something like fourth Wing which was traditionally published and  also extremely repetitive they had more chances to fix that a self-published author doesn't have the  same resources to do that anyway the book was very repetitive there were certain phrases specifically  every time the main male love interest would talk about the female character he would always say  she's making some face he's like there's that face again there she is there's that face again oh your  expression you should see the expression on your face like I can't count the number of times that  was said it was excessive like really excessive and so there were stuff like that in the book  where it was just same phrases and sentences being used over and over again same descriptions and  descriptors being used for characters over and over again so there wasn't a lot of variety in  the language that was being used that did make it a little bit tedious to read sometimes that  also makes it a lot quicker to read it kind of reads more like fan fiction in that sense another  thing that this book kind of suffered from was the pacing again I know I keep comparing it to Fourth  Wing but that was the point of this video to read these two books to see if I liked either of them  um and it turns out I don't really like either of them because they're both kind of just the same  thing and one of the same issues I had in both of them was the pacing and the pacing in this  one was also kind of horrible I highlighted this one thing that I feel like perfectly emphasizes  what the uh pacing of this book was actually like so there's just this section this one one section  where they're talking about like training together her and Rain the narration literally just says  so we trained and we bickered and that is exactly how this book is paced that is how so much of the  action of this book is explained so many things in this book are just like this happened and  then that happened now we jump forward this much in time and like that's it that's like the only  explanation they give you so that's why the World building makes no sense so that was personally  just one of the biggest issues for me other thing I will touch on uh the smart in this book  you're gonna be shocked I didn't hate it I genuinely didn't hate it I truly think that of  all the SMUD I've read in all of these romantic books like fourth Wing Avatar uh from blood and  Ash all those types of books this one by far had the best mud did I love it no but I didn't hate  it there was just one thing that I want to point out that I just thought was funny besides that I  thought it was pretty fine I like it was just it was completely fine and I don't really have much  to say I do want to read this line to you and I want you to guess what she is talking about and  what she's describing because out of context I just think it sounds so funny I didn't know it  was possible to find such a thing so stunning like a work of art it was as big and powerful  as the rest of him actually the size of it made me faintly nervous and yet it was also so elegant  every shade of Flesh exquisitely complementary the head peeking from a graceful sweep of tan skinyeah I've just never heard anyone describe it as elegant you know that's just not a word I would  think to you but besides that I honestly I have no problems with it the relationship in this book was  also kind of just okay there's some stuff that happens at the end some like twists and things  that I didn't entirely see coming but wasn't all that unexpected to me at the same time and I just  found the End of This Book to be really weird it was really really rushed like the last I want to  say 100 pages of this book or so is where kind of all of the actual action happens where things  start to make a little bit of sense where the relationship between the characters develops and  then you feel some kind of investment but then it gets like really really fast like everything  happens really fast like they don't even kiss for like 250 Pages or something the book was only like  my ebooks like 400 Pages or something like that so it's like halfway through more than halfway  through the book and they don't even like touch each other really and then from like that point on  from like the last hundred Pages or so it's just non-stop action and it's just like twist after  twist after twist after twist with like no nothing in between it just gets a little bit jarring and  overwhelming and so I found the pacing at the end to be quite odd and it just made the whole  ending of the book a little bit odd I don't think the actual events that happened were necessarily  bad or all that weird it was just too much too fast it felt like a lot of that needed to happen  sooner in the story or we needed to tone it down a little bit at the end and save some of that for  the next book I also was under the impression that this was a standalone book but from what I  gather I think there's at least one more book and potentially like a whole series but I think there  might just be one more book I won't be reading it I'm not interested enough to keep reading it but  I feel like the second book would probably be a bit more interesting than the first one was  because I feel like there's just more to do now but that is pretty much all I have to say about  this book I didn't think about it a lot there were definitely some moments where I felt like  I was actually enjoying it I felt something for the characters and I was trying to just suspend  my disbelief and you know have a good time I am not think about it very deeply but at the same  time there's just so many elements in this that are just not for me in terms of the World building  and the story structure and the characters and the tropes and everything it's just not my thing  I want to love romanticy as a genre I feel like I I do I feel like I should it's just what's  currently popular like the most popular obviously in this genre is in my opinion not even close to  what the best romanticy could be I understand that people don't want like heavy World building and  politics in their fantasy romance because they're reading it for the romance but if you don't have  some of that the story is much less believable the characters are a lot less believable if they  live in an extremely unrealistic world how are you supposed to believe that these characters  are realistic in any way if the circumstances of their lives are completely unrealistic because you  didn't spend the time to think about the structure of the world that you've created and the politics  and the dynamic of it so if that's not there the characters don't come to life either so that's  why I feel like I need a better balance of those things in order to actually feel an investment  in the relationship between the characters so yeah that's kind of all I have to say on  um The Serpent of the Wings and night I think I think I got it right that time I did like this  a little bit more than fourth Wing like I said I think I'd give this like 2.5 out of 5 Stars  I still feel like I'm being kind of generous with these ratings like these are not good books to me  like I don't like them they don't rank very high for me at all they're not one star books because  it's not the worst worst thing I've ever read but it's not up there either so we're gonna go with  like around a two to two and a half I think I gave fourth Wing a two so we'll give this one a two and  a half I might change that but that's kind of what I'm feeling right now they're not horrifying but  they're also not good so do without what you will but my personal recommendation try something else  I don't really think this is worth your time but there you all have it that is it for my thoughts  on Fourth wing and The Serpent and the wings of night this is far from the most difficult  or agonizing Experiment video I've had to make partially because I only read two books  which I think helped a little bit but also because they weren't like horrific if you're  just trying to have like a good time and you really like you really don't want to think  at all like absolutely no thoughts head emcee  um maybe you'll like it personally I don't think they're worth the hype in terms of the writing the  character development the World building you know just the building blocks of The Craft of  writing it's just not there with these two books which is why I I feel kind of confused sometimes  when books like this get so so popular because I feel like those are things that are foundational  to a good book and these books didn't really have it anyway that is it for this video I do plan to  make some more reading experiment videos but if there are any specific videos you would like to  see please do let me know in the comments down below I have a couple more planned but I'm more  than happy to take your suggestions as well I'm not sure if I will do the same thing where I'll  only read like two or three books or if I'll go back to reading five it kind of depends on the  length of the books but this one just felt right comparing these two if you'd like to follow me  on any of my social media all of my links are in the description box as always but thank you  all so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed and I will see you in my next video byeoh\n"