powerless is what happens when you read the hunger games and only focus on the everlark romance, missing the deeper themes. then you read red queen and somehow think it's brilliant, and are like "let me combine the two🤓☝" ofc the romance booktube/booktok girls think it's the best book ever written

Spoiler alert: the writing is not better in the second book.

People calling her the next JK Rowling reminds me of when people were saying that the Crescent City series was hard to understand because it is on the same level as Lord of the Rings and some people are not used to that kind of complexity like no, people don’t understand it because it was written sooo poorly

One of the problems with early success as an author is that there's no incentive to get better at the craft. If your poorly written book can make money, there's no need to get better to widen the audience. Otherwise, we'd have seen those improvements in a lot of authors. 🤷‍♀

Tiktok book (powerless): just basically being a bunch of tropes and 'scenes' and nothing else

Me: not at all surprised

S E Hinton published The Outsiders at 18 and managed to create an original, heartfelt book with characters that felt real and raw. It’s not a matter of age, it’s about talent and research. I’m tired of people saying “she was only 18 when she wrote it and she wrote it for herself; she didn’t think anyone would read it.” First off, I have a fully grown frontal lobe, so I know that that’s not true. You learn not to copyright at like 12 years old (at least in the States). She knows she copy and pasted exact scenes and characters, which is why she gave the disclaimer beforehand that “it’s a combination of the Hunger Games and Red Queen.” If she didn’t make that disclaimer, she’d be in a PR nightmare. And if she really “wrote it for herself” she wouldn’t have marketed it so heavily on TikTok, so that’s a piss poor excuse. People have developed a parasocial relationship with Lauren Roberts and can’t see beyond her bubbly Internet personality. It’s clouding their judgment to a severely mediocre and horribly unoriginal book that does a disservice to the YA fantasy genre.

so brave of this author to write a king who’s a brony

My brain will always associate the 'girl robs a prince' trope with snow and charming from once upon a time so I would not be able to take a scene like that seriously in any book😭

Powerless left me powerless
No but I hated this book and all its characters
And cmon who are we trying to fool with Kit in the love triangle lol he doesn't even have a POV

as a native english speaker who studied german to fluency you’re actually the most entertaining person 😭😭

"I can touch you now" - wenn man Voldemort auf Wish bestellt

I couldn't at all understand how she physically overpowered the king who literally has super strength

5:33 "It's also a very quick read, and a very easy read. Not that *I* read it quickly or easily" 💀😭

i got to like, idk, 7-8 chapters of this and i already had so many complaints like first of all the prince is a terrible person like what do you mean he commits war crimes and im supposed to root for him? like wdym the dude goes around killing people based on traits that they’re born with (at his father’s orders but still) that are brought about by a latent “disease” (it’s implied that there’s no proof of this disease existing) and is responsible for exiling those who have housed/hid/helped such people?? mind you this exile is basically the prince taking them to a treacherous desert with no supplies or preparation, just dumps them in there and tells them to take a hike. and we’re supposed to feel bad for him bc the people he killed haunt him??? he’s a good guy now cause he doesn’t kill kids directly but he’ll dump her with her family and let her die in the desert instead?? this is the guy we’re meant to be rooting for???

Überraschung
I'm german and when I was watching you for the first time I was like "Huh.. that accent sounds familiar... Is she from around here?"
and then like about 20 minutes later you talked about something german and I was having an Ahhh-moment lol

The author said she named Kai after Malachai from The Vampire Diaries, so who knows what other 'shower thoughts' originated from there too.

I read this book in a local book club only because everyone were so excited about it, and i was so disappointed with how they all thought it was amazing. Did we even read the same thing? And the second book is just worse
But to be fair, the author is pretty young she just hasn't found her voice yet, which i believe she will if she just deleted tiktok and Instagram and actually tried to use her own imagination

I swear, everything Kai says about Paedyn (she tows the line between dangerous and divine, etc) reminds me of the vapid dialogue you'd hear in one of those edgier perfume commercials with fast cars and a supermodel in a catsuit set to a Weeknd track

25:18 Fun fact, Nikki is her sister 😅 That gives you some insight into why she wasn’t much help in fixing plot holes.

I dnfed after 150 pages...the writing didn't seem real. I heard the author say she wrote the draft when she was like 16, which I thought (understandable) that it was. but now I'm looking at reviews for the sequel and people say the writing is more or less the same...