I did the rewrite: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hNCXp7J4xKucZoE.html

even after all these years i CANNOT get over how absurd all of the characters' names are. mare molly barrow still haunts me

Damn it, now I’m thinking about having silver periods

Something I hate about these "class is bad" kind of books is that most of them create a real difference between the ruler and the ruled, almost justifying the oppression, as if billionaires have some cool and awesome power aside of having bloodstained money. This was, in fact, my major contention point in Final Empire (along with the "inherited power" that also is kinda shitty that this book series also have). Bottom line, this kind of world building hurts your real-world message, which, presumably, is that we should eat the rich or something

The fact that the Stilt people have hair that turns pale towards the ends because of stress implies that their hair grows continually from the tip like a plant rather than from the follicle. I'm not sure what the world building implications of this are

I was kinda zoned out until I picked up the sentence "people who can control metal are called magnetrons" magnetron means microwave in my language so for a minute I thought a part of this worldbuidlinh was having a group of people called microwaves

YA fiction and people being divided into arbitrary groups name a better duo.

The idea of torture when you have people able to read memories is extra sick and twisted.

The catchphrase “That’s a shame. It sounds kind of neat,” progressively getting louder and louder as it sounds more frustrated is the cherry on top of this video lmao

i love when people passionately explain a series for multiple hours with the aid of an unhinged stringboard

A KZfaqr I haven’t seen before talking about a book series I have never heard of for close to two hours? Why, yes. I will enjoy the video and subscribe

One thing that always bothered me about this series was when Cal and Mare have sex, she gets a birth control pill because no one knows if Silvers and Reds can cross-breed. And when I heard that, I nearly spit my teeth out of my skull. You're telling me that Silvers have had Red servants for hundreds of years and there are no affairs between them? No forbidden romances? No bribing poor Red girls

Cities disappearing as a royal court moves isn't weird. This is how a few of the rotating Persian capitals worked. They were basically only a palace structure with foundations for tent cities to be built up nearby.

Evangeline gaslit, gatekept, and girlbossed throughout the entire series and that’s why i’ve been her stan since the first book.

I remember trying to read Red Queen for the first time. I accidentally imagined Mare as being older than she actually is and misinterpreted her anger for exhaustion. I was disappointed to learn she is just another generic YA protagonist. That would be kind of meta to write a YA protagonist who is just exhausted by everything that happens. Though I am not sure how compelling that would be in practice.

A lot of the missed opportunities I didn’t really think about when I read the series. But the one about Maven’s character and trauma being explored and him being healed was something I genuinely thought the book was leading into

"Normally the heroes of this kind of book would get everyone to work together through the power of friendship. But, I guess, the power of geopolitics and extreme violence is stronger." I LAUGHED FOR HOURS

34:27 Also didn't they already imply with Mare's case that giving the Reds the illusion of upward social mobility would be a massive PR blow to the rebellion and improve the public's perception of the aristocracy? Like it's very easy for a people to unite against such a culturally and politically distinct enemy. But if you theoretically have a chance, no matter how slim and unrealistic, to join the aristocracy, that's gonna make a small but significant percentage of people far less likely to rebel. Also if someone's brother's neighbour's boyfriend's sister-in-law is a Countess, they might think twice about categorically chopping off all the noble's heads.

There's no need for the menacing knife James, you know we will happily watch any new video 😂

love the recent influx of multihour videos explaining books likes this (or movies. or anything)

The weird names, setting and storyline really take you away from reality so hard that it's difficult to remember this is a future post-apocalyptic version of Earth. Like my immersion was fully suspended and then I hear "these are the ruins of New York" and it just snapped me out of it fully lol

"Shame, because that sounds really neat!" might have to become my new catchphrase

The Algorithm broke him, King's in his blank wall and knife gesturing era. I will always be ready for the content keep it up king

The absolute travesty of naming the magnet power people "magnetrons" instead of "ferros"

For a lot of the series, I had no idea that Farely was this young girl because it was mentioned briefly in her introduction, but then my brain just never understood that for some reason, because like you said, how could this girl supposed to be in her early 20s, be in charge of the biggest rebellion around. So when her relationship with Shade was revealed, I was so weirded out because I thought this woman in like her 30s or 40s was with this young guy, until I went onto the wiki page and realised, oh yeah this lady is actually around his age what the hell, she just seemed like that lady from Wreck-It-Ralph who kills bugs.

I remember reading this book series in high school and absolutely loving it, and then trying to re-read it the summer after my freshman year of college and being incredibly disappointed. It was almost like a sign that my childhood was over and it was time to move away from YA dystopia.

I follow the author on social media and she is so sweet, which is why I'm sad that I just can't get into her books. I tried reading Red Queen twice and Blade Breaker once but I just can't bring myself to care about the characters and story. So, thank you for summing it up:) I love these kinds of videos

While there are a lot of flaws to overall series I actually found Maven to be a really compelling villain character. Yes his mind was broken by his mother, but he continually chooses to bad decisions going against our heroes. There really was no "fixing" him and that made me quite sad, I would love to read more from his perspective

I recently reread this whole series and as silly as it may be at times, it is such a guilty pleasure 😭I hated Mare at first but I honestly quite like her now? #1 Kilorn hater though--he reminds me of Gale Hawthorne too much!!!! Also putting Gerard way as the photo for Maven is so funny omg

James Tullos with a knife is my favorite sub-genre of James Tullos videos

The Nepali king is just the most unexpected reference, not weird, just unexpected.

Shoutout to The Sister for passing on her books to you and providing the opportunity for this incredible video to exist!

I remember discovering the first book right after it came out and I got super into the series and was eagerly awaiting each subsequent release. Then I read King's Cage and it killed my love of YA fiction, which for a high schooler with very little standards is a pretty impressive thing to do.

31:24 I'm not even halfway through the video, and I'm already shocked by the sheer amount of "shame, because that sounds really cool"s. So, so many missed opportunities.

>Sees notification and reads title without being able to see video length. >assume I wont need to find another video to watch til nearly lunchtime. *>not disappointed.*

listening to this as a podcast and looking up an hour and a half later to see GERARD WAY was so jarring

Somehow the video gets better with every "No" Edit: should also give some love to the other running jokes, especially james pointing out the title drops

I love this and I am ashamed that in the folly of my youth I wrote fanfiction for this desperately trying to salvage the story and failed miserably. Also the Colonel is impeccably the correct choice for this representation. Edit: I must clarify, the story I was not fond of, tis the video essay I love. Although Shade was an OP Gary Stu, I did like and hate the fact he died, he was honestly the only remotely interesting character in a world of interchangeable pieces.

you mentioning the amount of missed opportunities is my favourite thing about this video ajsdjhsdk

4:58 "since she's largely devoid of personality and really only there to project onto i'm going to represent her with this picture" lmfaoooooo

You can’t convince me that the beginning of the third book wasn’t just for fetish

i love your wattpad casting for this

I completely forgot that Farley isn't 30. There's no way she was meant to be a teenager. Also how much filler there is in here, although I do remember taking nearly a month to read War Storm.

No one will understand how much middle school me was obsessed with this series. Is it good? NO! But it meant so much to me back then, thank you for this.

I never managed to get past the first book, so I'm very excited for this! Thanks, James!!

I forced finished Red Queen and started Glass Sword but had to dnf. So thanks for this summary. I was mildly curious about how the series wrapped up.

Lol the pictures you picked for every character were fantastic!! I was laughing every time

Good things here: - new James video - long video on something I will never read - wall

That’s a really cool format I like the summary thing i get to watch a lot of funny James humour and avoid reading a boring book.

The King's Cage was the Glass Sword we Red Queen'ed along the way

The fact that I read the three books but I cannot recall anything apart form Mare being extremely annoying and victimized, Maven having a dog kink with her and everyone betraying everyone for no reason.

I love this series despite its flaws lmao. It’s like Cassandra Clare such a guilty pleasure

No need for multiple perspectives is a bold statement. I get its hard to do, but some of my favorite series do it. The Expanse, GoT, stormlight, etc. Just cause crappy YA authors can't pull it off doesnt mean its a bad writing practice.

loved the bloodborne shirt, it kinda fits with the theme of the video, local man goes through a hellish landscape obsessed with blood lol

I'm glad you prefaced this all with how you won't accidentally hurt yourself

about evil teleporters, i legit only have a singular clue about them, and its how a lot of the newbloods seem to be, like, juiced up versions of silver powers, like cameron doesn’t just stop powers, she stops hearts too (so edgy), so i just kind of assumed that the teleporters were better versions of the super fast guys? Still no idea but just my (probably dumb) thoughts

On the teleporter question: to the best of my knowledge, the newblood powers sre designed to be Silver powers, turned up to 10. I.E. Mare is like a storm, but much more precise and just with lightning. The gravity ones are like the telekinetic Silvers. Cameron is a boosted up Silence. John is a deus-ex-machina Eyes. Following this logic, Shade and the other teleporters seem to be boosted up swifts/speedsters. So, that might be the answer to why there are no evil teleporters.

18:43 never read or heard of the series but itd be interesting if reds had powers just maybe less often than silvers do and the government was just making them "disappear" for medical experiments similar to Unit 731.

I have no idea what this is but I'm less than 20 seconds in and the picture of Gerard Way has me interested in where the heck this could possibly be going

I remember reading red queen cuz the cover was cool

mostly unrelated but unironically i think agents of shield (i know) did the whole "character(s) who can see the future" thing REALLY well. all four times they did it. The first one, who is an antagonist and a threat in season 2, is called the clairvoyent, and is high up in a secret org. we later find out is, just, hydra. It seems like he is able to see the future (something most of the characters are really skeptical about, because this early on aos is still very much focusing in on the spy/tech/alien stuff and less the other kinds of superpowers they get into later on) because he's always able to predict what the team is going to do next, sets some very fucked up traps, ect ect. we later find out this guy actually has no powers to speak of - "he isn't clairvoyent, he has security clearance" because he's just been able to read their communications and plans ahead of time. very fun. the next one - raina - was part of this cult because she genuinely believed in this guy's clairvoyance, and at the reveal that he's not she is, understandably messed up, and then later gets powers that make her visibly non-human, causes her chronic pain, and also... gives her visions of future events, though she doesn't figure out that's what it is for a little while. She's fun, even before these powers, tbh. She's evil and i adore her. The next two are my favorite, i think - a father and his daughter, both who have powers from the same source as raina above. They can both see the future in slightly different ways, and it SUCKS for both of them. For the dad, whenever he touches another person both of them get extremely detailed and realistic visions of their death, which means he leaves his family (and infant daughter) because he can't touch them without inflicting these visions on them. I feel so bad for him, it's so tragic. We get a couple death visions through him, which are all interesting because they're all fairly limited snapshot moments of these events, which, while /do/ come true, allow for a Lot of interpretation. Now. His daughter. Robin. I adore her, i feel so bad for her, she gets the worst end of the deal. Robin's future-seeing mechanism is this: she sees moments throughout her entire life, somewhat at random, all the time. She doesn't exist in the present very much. Most of her visions are interpreted through crayon drawings she's done (as for most of this, in the present, she is a child) and it's just. SO! She knows how she dies before she's a teenager, she knows how her mother dies before that, she's seen the earth end and so many other horrors and she can do nothing to change it, and when she tries to call out warnings she's either too early or far too late and her mind is never at the same time as her body. We do see her as an old woman but i'm Obsessed with the idea of her as a teen and an adult trying to live her life when she's an infant and a dying old woman and every part of her life at once. anyways this is my obligative aos propoganda. robin my beloved.

So Iris’ dad wasn’t the leader of the Lakelands. Her parents are cousins (because royal family) and her mom is more senior in line so the queen is the actual leader while the king was her consort. Their older daughter Tiora would inherit after her mom died regardless of if her father was alive. Hope that makes sense :)

20:20 "Which means that she had never bled" Soooo are Silver's periods.... sliver? Ooor?

Well, I only took a twenty minute break to read about the Nepalese Royal Massacre and I think old Gyanendra did it.

What doesn't make sense: Why are the nobility fighting in an arena for the amusement of the common people like gladiators?

I love this format (I rewatch the Cari Can Read ones regularly lol), and this kinda toned-down comedy variation is gold. I actually laughed out loud several times 😂. Sub!

This book was such a fever dream that despite having read the first 2 books this video is all new information

I haven’t finished yet, so I’m curious if the explanation of Kings Cage is just going to be “Literally nothing happens, moving along.”

i read this book as a young teen back in its hayday (i wasn’t the biggest fan of YA but had avid reader friends, so i’d read what they read) and all i remember was absolutely hating the magic system lmao. hilariously my recently reading mistborn (and then everything else in the cosmere) reminded me so much of red queen’s magic system, for whatever reason. except it was the shining example of everything my brain hates with magic - i like to know *why* a power works a certain way or why some scenarios aren’t good for it and things like that. honestly can’t remember much else of red queen. just teenage me’s intense hatred of most everything in it lol

i read the first two books of this series back in 2017 and i remember absolutely NOTHING about it now, so this video is so helpful in reminding me why that book is so unforgettable 😭

It's amazing how little I remember from reading these books. The phrase "Wait, that happened?" went through my mind over and over again 😂. I'm usually really good at remembering things. I had some recollection of the first book but mostly I recall that they were quite long and that the plot was poorly paced. The sudden appearance of multiple POVs was also jarring. It feels like there was not enough story to tell from the perspective of the main character so the author had to include others.

i genuinely let out a cry after i saw you represent MAVEN with gerard way😭

1:31:53 Katara has entered the chat.

Viewers “what you got there James?” James “A KNIFE!” Viewers “NNNNNOOOOO!”

Been watching for about 4 years man, and it's always quality content

was kind of interested in what warfare looks like as guns/regular warfare vs. magic people, but everyone has magic anyway developing non-metal ballistics or specializing snipers who can find a moment when a magnetron isn't shielding, etc.

how dare you, that's the swaggiest stick i've ever seen

James on that Mike's Mic evidence board type beat

All in all: If you liked elements of this book's setting and want a better, fuller narritive, read the mistborn saga by Brandon Sanderson.

I love how each NO gets progressively more violently loud

I think I described Mare to a friend as "she's basically a block of wood"

-*looks at title, including the word 'brief'* -*glances at length of actual video* ...Welp, this should be interesting...😂

I read all these books and I feel validated by your exasperation. Because I was like, huh, really, this is weird, but I HAVE to finish it.

I'd really like to hear your take on Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series. It's the story of a British naval officer in an alternate history where Napoleon Bonaparte had access to dragons (along with the rest of the world leaders). Runs a total of nine titles, most of which I find to be quite fun.

I'm feeling like the choice of "No!" clips had more thought put into them than most of the actual series being covered.

Lol you bending the steel sword was so funny

“She’s going to become a queen. And she’s a Red! She’s a RED QU-“ Lol at the editing 😂

Fantastic video as always! Tried to read the series and was intrigued by its potential but that wasn't enough to get me through the bland wish fulfillment and I threw in the towel once totally-not-Disctrict-13 was introduced. Glad I did, hearing your summary saved me a lot of eye rolling lol. Please do a rewrite video, I would love to hear your take on it!

18:09 It probably says a lot about our narcissistic culture why so many of our stories, especially the YA ones, are about effortlessly super-special people. IIRC, that’s what the “Mary Sue” concept was meant to describe.

24:05 - so does her family ever address that officially, Mare is thought to be a Silver-fathered bastard on their mother? No tension with her siblings and parents over that? Running theme I guess

I tried to read the series some time last year because I saw a lot of recommendations online, but I couldn't get past the second book and dropped it, but I was always wanted to know how it finished so thank you for this James

I dini’t understand much except, mumbled mumble rebellion, mumbled mumbling power, mumbled mumbling useless romance. 10/10 will watch again in half a year

A rewrite sounds super cool. This series seems like it could have been really cool.

It took me a while to realize who this was, this new look is really working for you gurl.

OMG I remember hating these books so much when I read them in 8th grade when I was like 12 and I literally wanted to fight 99% of my grade because they all said it was their favorite book 😂

I read the book years ago, and I thought it was overall very boring. I heard the author had a great deal of connections with the publishing industry, and she basically didn’t have to do anything to become a published NYT best selling author 🥱 I mean, her writing style is fine, but I truly think the story is just… bland. Most likely due to everyone wanting to copy off of SJM 🤷🏾‍♀️

i appreciate that you keep reiterating who the characters are because i'm watching this over several days and couldn't remember for the life of me who all these people are.

Man, those names for people with very specific powers ruled by a very specific kind of ruling class... sounds like the bastard child of Mistborn and the Grishaverse

yesss a new hours long james tullos video to fall asleep to

If any series is in need of a re-write it's this one!