C'mon, he is always hinted to be this unimaginably powerful dude, but no one seems to remember that this guy is supposed to be stuck in a frozen lake since millions of years, he can destroy the world but not crush some ice.
i never got over this!!!! once i figured she was mixed in the angel shenanigans i was like my girl lucifer for sure!! but no, we can be a little silly in this angel fantasy romance.
i so badly want/hope someone did a rewritten fanfiction version of it and actually touched on all of these ideas that were implanted (ESPECIALLY the lucifer not being evil & god not being pure idea, at least that they’re not 100% of either) because i’d DEVOUR those. if i was a better writer i’d write them myself
James before book one: "I think Christian mythology is underutilized in fiction" James after book four: "God could have just stopped Satan being evil at any point? What was the point to any of this?"
Andrew Cunningham so, if god and angels and what nought actually existed humans would have a perfect, completely unflawed understanding of how these unreasonably powerful creatures work? Also didn’t the Bible “detail” God fighting other creatures? If God actually had to fight another creature then he wouldn’t be all powerful. Essentially you have a situation in which the only understanding you have of the world is given by the guy on top. That leaves it open for writers to actually make things interesting by having God lie his happy little ass off. It would fallow Christian mythology but put into question how much of it is true and how much is actually just mythology.
@@sonofthewolfguardianofthef1214 , so you think God should be portrayed the way he is in the Bible? What a radically orthodox idea. Christian audiences would probably hate it.
I think, the whole "you don't get reincarnated again, bc you werent baptized" could work better in other religions, bc, speaking as an amateur admittedly, abrahamic religions always seem to be definitive where you go after death. Either heaven, or hell(or purgatory), and not reincarnation, bc that concept is more common in east asian religions. "Only real christians get reincarnated" sounds more like an anime trying to use christianity in their story, without having the slightest knowledge about christianity.
In christianity, this is usually related to what happens after the apocalypse, the idea being that the dead will literally rise from their graves (so it's not actually reincarnation of the soul into a new body because the separation of body and soul doesn't originally exist in christianity). So usually one of the conditions of being "woken up" when the time has come would be being baptised.
I think it depends on the sect of thinking and individuals in my experience. I have seen Orthodox Jews who believe in reincarnation whole heartedly. And some that only believe in the apocalypse with the donkey and the horn and the massiah.
@@susiechoban1542 Depends on the sect. Some folks think that believing in/accepting Christ into your heart is enough, without any need for worldly acknowledgement of your conviction.
Well, there were always Angels that either looked like or at least were able to look like normal people or people with wings presumably to be a bit more palatable to mortals they interacted with and that imagery was later used to represent all angels as far back as the first Christian cults in the Roman Empire, presumably because a dude with wings is easier to draw than whatever the fuck a seraphim is supposed to be. But Renaissance art really codified the "Angels are winged pretty good boys" trope, which is not what angels (even the human looking ones) were at all in the beginning. They were primarily God's enforcers and warriors and they weren't afraid to fuck up some sinners in the most brutal ways possible and show it off too. Flaming swords and all that.
I blame romans, when christianity spread to Rome it picked up a lot of art direction from them, and they wanted to make pretty things, middle eastern religion with eldrith abominations, dark visions and god presence literally burning you to crisp was not exactly their style.
Jakub Mike Christianity spread to “Rome” in like 300-400 years after Jesus’s birth, dude. Christian art was scarce, and really started to flourish when the newly-Christian former-pagans mixed their new religion with their own traditions. But that’s literally an entire millennium before the Renaissance era. That’s the decadence of antiquity, and what prepared the ‘mediaeval’ epoch. So no, you’re completely off-base here.
Treacle is actually just a sweet syrup made during the refining of sugar. So he was just giving her sweetened milk, not drugging her.... And god, I can't believe I felt the need to supply that clarity for a series so decidedly unworthy of it.
That's all well and good, but like what is happening in that scene then? Because even with hindsight it really sounds like that incarnation of Lucinda is about to die again (presumably by immolation) and Daniel is doing or giving something to her to ease the pain of passing and he's really torn up about it because this has happened to him like hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Or is that supposed to be like metaphorical and what he's giving her to ease the pain is the time with him or the sweet milk because I guess that's her favourite drink in all her incarnations or something? It's really super unclear.
@@PhileasLiebmann i always read it as a “favourite drink but also it’ll help you be asleep/not in pain while you die in like 10 minutes” type thing especially after actually reading past that point because as far as i remember he never is said to having... “helped” it happen as far as i remember? at least not like that.
you putting the US map up for us to visualixe what u were saying was the coolest and most considerate thing ever Mr James, thank you. i didn't have to google the map and try to figure it out myself lmao
Agreed! So was adding "in the us" when mentioning hulu. It's great when people from the us acknowledge we might have no access to their subscription services, or we might but the catalogue will be different for us. Non-usa fans of James sending love x
ikr!!! when he talked about it i just shrugged it off bc i didnt understand it and i wasnt willing to stop the vid to search it online but then he showed the map and i was like OH OK WOW. sending love from 🇦🇷!
That or watch Supernatural from Season 4 onwards. Honestly, not one love story can beat Castiel and Dean’s-especially in this Biblical/Mythological fantasy with angels and demons genre.
@@Luisneospied he went to superhell i think, i dont watch spn. not that i'd know much anyway, im a good omens fan and my ship is pretty much canon. sucks for yall tho i guess
I've added time-travel into my novel that's flawless: the character lays down, and travels forward in time by the mystic art of a long nap. It's a magical nap, so it can go as long as they want.
This series was EVERYWHERE during the Twilight knock-off boom. Every bookshop with a YA or 'Dark Romance' section (which was what they called the Twilight knock-off section,) had it. And it seems like people are only just now remembering it existed.
"Dark Romance" what crap. A dark romance should be actually dark and fucked up. I'm talking big age gaps, unequal power, unhealthy fixation, and tons of lies and sex. Get all up in them taboos and make the reader feel filthy, dammit!
I remember my friend and I reading this around the 7th/8th grade and we were so bored we decided to work together to make a fanfiction with Penn as the main character instead. She eventually learns witchcraft and becomes more powerful and confident wanting to save Lucinda and Daniel from their fate, trying to find a way to make them human while also slowly falling for Cam as they work together along the way.... I don't remember us finishing the story because we discovered anime. 🤣🤣🤣
Yes! Now James is using tabs to aggressively analyze terrible books, like Krimson Rogue. This is gonna be fun! I saw the trailer for the movie a while ago and was intrigued until I realized it was a Twilight clone.
I saw the movie. I hated it... and i read the books. Was not worth the four + year wait. seriously it was finished in like 2012 i think, released in 2017. My FRIEND found it, put it on cause she knew i loved the books. yeah no.. movie was awful.
Actually, I didn’t think the movie was bad. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the word, but compared to the book? It was tolerable. Unremarkable-but tolerable. The book made me rage quit.
How are you gonna have the main character be in love with Lucifer and not do ANYTHING with that?! And to not have any actual opinion on the argument between God and Lucifer!? Also please please do the Immortals series there is just SO MUCH content there
Because, you know... Lucifer is just probably some Hot, powerful badboy. Not like Angel Who Hates Humanity. (seriously, making Lucifer falling in love with Our Protagonist is always missing the definition of Lucifer.)
@@a.w.4708 I mean, biblically he was the top angel. The most powerful and beautiful of them all. That's why he's so tempting. He looks enticing. The problem occurred when that went to his head and decided he could replace God.
@@profsrlojohn635 Yes, beautiful and powerful, but not handsome, sexy and badboyish. He (or they - Lucifer don't have sex) hates humanity, and hates it mostly for it's imperfections so picturing them as imperfections-loving rock-style motor-riding Hot boy is not very this kind of Beauty. Even white diamond from Steven Universe is more accurate picture of Lucifer than this Harley dude, and she was probably created based on author's image of God, so Lucifer's opposite!
@@a.w.4708 oh I know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder however, so it's not too much of a stretch to say Lucifer, being the duplicitous individual he is, takes form of whatever someone thinks is beutiful. It seems rather in-charecter to be honest.
I want an Angel YA romance where the angel is still in the original biblical horror terror stage. “Oh Jason, I love your amorphous form and thousands of eyes and wings. That, that is what I’ve always wanted in a (gender unconfirmed) man, eyes and wings.” This is the monster romance we deserve
Lol I was horrified by the fact that the main character of Fallen is named Lucinda- it ain't my name or even close, but I have an OC named Lucinda whom I appreciate very much and I'm offended that her name was used in such an awful book
When you said that the main character’s name is Luce, I was really 100% convinced that the plot twist was going to be that she was Lucifer reincarnated. But I guess that would have been too interesting
something about “i’m korean today” made me choke on my dinner. i have no memory of finishing this series but i do remember reading the first one, one of those forgotten middle school (i think) books
I think that the epilogue "drugging" thing was more of like, he had known her for so long that he already knew everything about her, including what she drinks to fall asleep. And he had been giving it to her in her past lives to help her fall asleep. Not drugging her lmao
Wait, if Luce is a fallen angel, how come she can go into a church that Daniel can't? How come she's so killable? How come she had no memories of it? How come she has no angel-powers? Is she conceived and born and grow like a human? Why? How? Are Luce's parents special in some way? If they aren't, how are they giving birth to an angel? Hmmm...I suspect the author did not think too hard about that twist...
From what I understand the curse was basically transforming her into a technically mortal woman except for the reincarnation, so she was actually human until God lifted it. Which leads me to question why God tied the being human bit into the curse in the first place and didn't just turn her into a reincarnating human woman permanently and then cursed her, that would've been way more sensible, but I digress. That still doesn't explain why Daniel didn't want to tell her that she had been an Angel before (which he must've known the whole time), which most likely might've helped them lift the curse on their own centuries ago if she'd known to control her time travel power earlier to find out what was going on. Unless he knew that for some reason Satan wanted to use that opportunity to gain the upper hand in the war, in which case why? And also Satan didn't actually need Lucinda for any of that, so… there is no point to any of this.
This is EXACTLY Anna’s plot arc in Supernatural imao. She’s chooses to fall from Heaven because human life and free will attracts her. She physically rips out her grace and hides it in a tree somewhere. She’s reborn again as a human(though the body is still her vessel and her true form is still inside the grace she’s hidden away.) She has no idea about her past until the apocalypse is nigh and she hears voices speaking inside her head. These are angels conversing with each other through a connected link inside their grace-“angel radio” if you might. Eventually the main characters get to her and help her find out that she’s actually an angel and she gets her grace back(has obligatory sex with one of the main guys because heteronormativity) and then is killed off after a couple of episodes.
As soon as I heard the ending, I immediately thought "hey, I have an idea for a better ending that keeps to the theme of "our personal love is more important than anything"". At the end, all of the other armies see Luce and Daniel and are inspired by them and go "huh. Yeah, I do love my love interest more than God/Satan" and they all defect. That way, it ends with the scales still in balance or whatever, but both God and Satan are alone and have to duke shit out themselves. There, now the main characters have actually made an impact on their world, changing it for the better (because now the only people stuck in this war are the only two people who actually give a shit about it).
Do the Dante Valentine series. It's a steaming pile of romantic garbage, but the worldbuilding is actually kinda cool. Not to mention it has Fallen DEMONS, which is just hilarious.
@@jackieelizabeth8614 No they're normal demons that 'Fall' in love with mortal woman. The woman get some powers, but the demons are basically cast out of hell and lose a lot of their power.
brooo I remember reading this after twilight in highschool... Twilight has its faults but it is still entertaining and easy to read through. I did not finish the first book fallen I had to go back and read it a year later and it was still boring, Hell what stood out to me in this book was the villain's monologue about how dumb it was for the plot to revolve around a teenagers romance... Like seriously this book was shitting on its own premise. That was the first book I dropped solely for the lack of interest it got out of me.
So the main charcarter is called Lucinda... Such level of subtlety! What´s next? The reincarnetion of Amon-Ra is called Ramon, or maybe a latin boy is called Jesus but in his birth certificate it is spelled with a "z"... At this point why not just cut any semblance resemblence of wit and call her: *LUCI*a *FER*nanda.
@@maadtee6281 that one could be interesting. That the reason why amon ra is seen as a Sun god is because when he was created, the fall from heaven of Lucifer, out of the pure hatred the first angel felt, Amon combusted into existence into a ball of flames as bright as the king of asters!
Am I the only one who gets irrationally angry when an author dedicates whole paragraphs to a character's appearance? I feel like they could make their point in one to two sentences. Like, I know they're pandering to the Deviant Art crowd, but it's just so uninspired.
I get wanting to paint a good picture of who your character is, and they can even have all this paragraphs about that, just spread them more across the book. Don't put it all in a big exposition dump; they can give one, maybe two paragraphs of appearance (if they are not incredibly long paragraphs), then give us some story, then later put another one or two appearance paragraphs, and just keep doing that for all the characters they want. When it's all at once is just *so boring*
The best thing is give overall appearance when you first intro the character (general build/height/hair colour/length/dark or light eyes) and then gradually introduce bits whenever another character is close to them like "x noticed the small scar beside ys mouth" "x was shaken by the :insert emotion: in ys :insert colour: eyes"
Exorikk I’ve just assumed it was a rule of thumb that you should never do that. Besides, I always found it pretentious. Personally, I prefer to describe something that stands out about the character. For example, my protagonist has grey eyes and it’s something people tend to notice about him first, especially because it contrasts with his dark skin. I find trickling in information about their appearance is more fun. Like there’s one point where he’s sleeping next to the man he loves and his partner traces the shape of his nose and remarks how he never used to have a hump. And the protagonist responds with something along the lines of “it was broken by a friend of mine. Never left my face undefended after that lesson.”
I lap that up, as I am a description hoe. I could read an entire book of someone just describing something. Interesting how we’re on the exact different sides.
I just realized how much this reminds me of those weird quiz websites for teens where they'd have a "choose your own adventure" type quiz with extremely edgy love interests...
I actually read a extremly good time-travel story recently. (It's a fanfiction, but hear me out) It uses the concept that you don't send your physical body back in time, but your conciousness. So you just land in your body when it was further back in time. The story was awesome, had me on the edge of my seat
Oooh, that's sounds similiar to a movie in my country named "Probudím se včera" (I wake up yesterday), where the guy travel 30 years into the past and it's kinda funny. (Like one scene, he's in school and has Russian class and gets send to the board to be tested, but his present self already forgot it, so know, he doesn't remember it either now and he has to improvise)
I never read those books, because in the midst of the twilight hype this book was called "Engelsnacht" (Angels Night) and had such an atrociously bad looking cover that I never even picked it up in the store to read the description. Turns out I didn't miss a thing.
"was ist diese Pferdescheiße ?" that got me dying of laughter... you missed the e at the end of scheiße, you just said scheiß, but that was honestly impressive ^^
Ok so Insta love is so annoying. It's so unrealistic that even in a fictional setting it takes me out of the story completely. Like no one acts like that. XD if you make people act like not real people, then they don't feel like real people. Like those characters that have only 1 character trait. Example; "The Bully" , "The blonde", "The love interest who for some reason is completely perfect in every way and for some reason loves a dull girl who isn't pretty at all apparently"
it would've been so funny if she sees him for the first time and waxes poetic about his eyes and good looks and then he opens his mouth and he's just a huge asshole and all her feelings fall apart. the rose colored glasses immediately crack. and from then on she keeps running into him but absolutely hating it cuz he's an asshole. also with the context that they have reincarnated and loved each other in past lives it would be even funnier. but nah.
I remember reading the first book when I was 13/14 years old and I hated every single character in this book with the exception of Penn (not that I loved her, but she was at least an okay person) and then she just dies and I was like "wait, I LITERALLY have no reason to keep reading this series because I really don't give a f*** about what will happen to any of them".
Hey, I know it's not a story or a book but Dark (the Netflix series) is very good at doing time travelling stuff. Don't know whether or not you would count it tho :(
"[…] there were always little morsels that I could get into, that I could enjoy, but it never amounted to much of anything." So it's like… the Sherlock of Twilight clones?
You might wanna check out the TV show Dark on Netflix. I found it the tightest written piece of entertainment I’ve (ever?) seen. As a whole product, the entire thing is a masterpiece, and I think you’ll find they did something truly extraordinary in it.
I've read this series, given to me by a relative that thought it was a YA fantasy novel (since i was into books like Maze runner and percy jackson at the time) and since i didn't want to let it go to waste i decided to give it a go and boy oh boy, let's just say i put Luce in the same shelf as Bella from Twilight and Elena from TVD and leave it at that.
finally i can know what the hell happens in these books! i recognize the cover of the first book from middle school when it was displayed in the library, but i think i got a couple pages in and nope'd out.
I swear your grown-out hair has it's own presence in this video 😂. Also, as soon as the concept of the God being (maybe) not so good came up I couldn't help thinking about Onision's book. And you brought it up. And put a HxH reference into the vid. It came together so well for me, my brain got the references. A satisfying meal.
I am really really hoping for James' takes on like.. the Vampire Academy series and its spinoffs, or the Mortal Instruments because those series were also beloved tween schlock for me, and i think they might actually hold up slightly better
That’s what I was thinking. Christian mythology has been used so commonly in Western literature for so many centuries that I just groan whenever it shows up. I fully stopped watching Supernatural when they introduced angels and demons because I was so disappointed in them for doing the same old tired shit.
I'm so glad you addressed how Daniel treats her. There was this trend in ya when I was a teen where the romance leads were all kind of assholes and I never understood the appeal.
I was like "oh nice i wanted to read that book so let's watch it." After a few minutes i realized i saw another review of it already and how BAD it is and was just sad xD
Very long comment incoming, with spoilers from the books. I was anxiously waiting for you to cover these books. Personally, I really enjoyed the Fallen series despite its flaws. I have a guilty pleasure for stories with forbidden love and with angels as part of the plot, I was all in. This book series is not for everyone, and your criticism is very informative and well thought out. I believe Lauren is a fantastic writer, but she does better with her side characters than with Daniel and Luce, despite thinking they’re alright in my opinion. For me, Torment was the weakest book. It’s basically Fallen again, but with Luce having feelings for Miles and transferring to another school. The ending did leave suspense when she began to travel through Announcers, but it was at the end. My favorite either has to be Passion or Fallen in Love. Passion is really interesting for me as it shows Luce’s past lives and Bill (despite being the obvious villain Lucifer) was a snarky but somewhat funny companion. Fallen in Love highlights the side characters, who help make the books tolerable, have their own stories of love, either sacrificing the chance of being with them so they can be happy (Roland), or another take of forbidden love that will have consequences due to the inevitable battle (Arianne). That said, I’m glad you enjoyed Passion despite your overall opinion on the series. At first, I was not into the ending for Rapture, but considering that Daniel and Luce don’t have to worry about the curse every 17 years, having a final life together is honestly bittersweet. But I do see your reasons on why it’s a middle finger to you. I thought it was interesting to have the focus be on Cam in Unforgiven since he also has a love interest he keeps reuniting with, but the ending... After reading Waterfall, Lauren’s endings have been cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. I was so confused I had to read the last chapter twice and I still don’t know what exactly happened. Lauren could have ended the series with Rapture and stayed with it. I believe it’s more fulfilling to come to our conclusions on how the other angels live their lives as Luce and Daniel are reborn as humans. And yeah... the less said about the movie the better. I loved the casting for Daniel. Jeremy Irvine was a perfect choice for him and he’s the reason why I was able to get through the movie. The way the distribution company advertised it was absolutely awful. The budget was also the reason why the movie was bad. I can understand being at a different location than Georgia to make it cheap, but the special effects were just... why? And I’m really curious, do you plan to read the Teardrop series? It started out interestingly, but the second book made me frustrated because it was meant to be a trilogy, and Waterfall ended so abruptly that I was honestly sad at how a series with interesting potential was wasted. If you do plan to read the series, be sure to look up the extra story Lauren posted on Wattpad, but read it after Teardrop so you can understand. Even though we have different opinions, I’m glad you covered this! Looking forward to more of your videos. Edit: regarding your question about Luce’s parents, I believe they probably just have no memory of her as history basically gets rewritten. I asked this to myself too when I first read Rapture, but I think it makes a bit of sense that her parents are still living, but did not have any children due to Luce being reborn.
Maybe it was just because I was in middle school when it was popular, but I feel like Angel Fiction, and playing around with that mythos actually did have it's time in the sun. Like... There's this series, there's Blue Bloods, there's Unearthly, there's Halo, there's Hush Hush... And those were the popular ones, there's oodles that weren't as popular as well. For what it's worth, Blue Bloods is an angel/vampire/reincarnation hybrid story, and is by far the best of the bunch. I don't see people talk about it very often. Maybe it just wasn't as well known?
OMFG I remember reading these books. I stopped at the second book and I wrote in my review: This book is called Torment, which is about right because that's what reading this felt like.
I've read the entire series and only because I was in boarding school, I was desperate for the escapism. it started so well then just went downhill really bad. I cant even recommend them to anyone. but I definitely recommend The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren which as far as I remember I enjoyed.
34:40 have you ever heard of "C°ntinuum: roleplaying in The Yet"? It basically does just that. It's a tabletop rpg where you play as time travelers, and doing things like creating paradoxes and meeting yourself are actually part of the mechanics. For example, if you, say, somehow get stuck in an Old West prison, you could just declare that your future self just comes out of nowhere and lets you out. However, creating too many unresolved paradoxes slowly writes you out of existence. The solution to this is to resolve them. For the example above, you would have to go back and give yourself the key at some point to get rid of your Frag (the condition that represents your level of "fading out of existence-ness." It's a pretty neat game and I brought it up because I thought it might be something you would enjoy.
James: The 3rd one is pretty good actually. I enjoyed that one. 2017 Me, who stopped reading it halfway through and hid it behind better books: *yeah, sooo good*
so Satan is defeated... by an *_ACTUAL_* DEUS EX MACHINA? Like... you could've done what Eru Ilúvatar (the Creator of Tolkien's world) did when Gandalf was near death after fighting Durin's Bane, and Eru allowed him to be reborn as Gandalf the White due to him staying faithful to his promise as an Istari (who were the 5 wizards) the promise before they came to middle earth was basically, don't own land, don't show your full strength (so yes, Gandalf was always holding back, but in the books it was alluded to his more powerful and ancient strength), and make sure to thwart, or at least stall Sauron and make sure the ring doesn't find his way back (and if possible, help whoever owns it destroy it)
i honestly cannot believe you had the strength to read these books in 2020, i read them starting in 2009 when i was in high school, they were awful then and awful now, hats off to you for getting through them. also i feel OLD now :’)
OMG I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT. I mean seriously-if they can’t do an angel romance like Cas and Dean they just shouldn’t do it. It saves us from being introduced to such crappy titles.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
"Satan's not an amazing villain, but he has his moments."
Quotes for the centuries.
Should be placed on the back of the bible as a book blurb lol.
All of his quotes are quite iconic
Satan standing there ain't scary, but how he controls people through vices, is a pretty cool premise.
C'mon, he is always hinted to be this unimaginably powerful dude, but no one seems to remember that this guy is supposed to be stuck in a frozen lake since millions of years, he can destroy the world but not crush some ice.
in the bible god killed more people then satan.
I’m mad that the main character is named Luce and there isn’t a twist reveal where secretly she’s Lucifer
Exactly!
I've been expecting this to be the twist the entire time. Man.
i never got over this!!!! once i figured she was mixed in the angel shenanigans i was like my girl lucifer for sure!!
but no, we can be a little silly in this angel fantasy romance.
I can't believe a Love-Triangle litterally caused hell to exist
sounds legit
Fitting.
This sounds like a Terrible Writing Advice gag, but it's true.
fitting
😂
Stilettoes as part of a school uniform in a boarding school for troubled kids? Why not.
Thats what i thought haha
I'm assuming they mean the Sicilian stabby knife, right?
honestly if that was my school uniform i would be breaking uniform constantly so i could wear normal goddamn shoes that i won't break my ankles with
Are you talking about St Trinian’s? 😂
Lmao whenever someone mentions a stiletto all I can think of is Eye of the Needle.
The biggest insult to injury is that the first book happens in a TWO WEEK period, and the whole series happens in ONE AND HALF MONTHS.
Oh jeez, I've read dubious series but they took place over like 4/5 years
TwiztedGames wtf i never knew this
To be fair, they share dozens of past lives
omg that's game changing information
That is somehow more absurd than the fact that the whole 50 shades trilogy happened in the span of... At least a month?
This entire series can be summarized with "it was kind of a good idea, but they did nothing interesting with it."
i so badly want/hope someone did a rewritten fanfiction version of it and actually touched on all of these ideas that were implanted (ESPECIALLY the lucifer not being evil & god not being pure idea, at least that they’re not 100% of either) because i’d DEVOUR those. if i was a better writer i’d write them myself
James before book one: "I think Christian mythology is underutilized in fiction"
James after book four: "God could have just stopped Satan being evil at any point? What was the point to any of this?"
That’s why God needs to be portrayed as the most powerful, but not all powerful and extremely Narcissistic.
@@sonofthewolfguardianofthef1214 It's no longer Christian mythology then, is it? You just have a minimalist re-colour of the Greek pantheon.
Andrew Cunningham so, if god and angels and what nought actually existed humans would have a perfect, completely unflawed understanding of how these unreasonably powerful creatures work? Also didn’t the Bible “detail” God fighting other creatures? If God actually had to fight another creature then he wouldn’t be all powerful. Essentially you have a situation in which the only understanding you have of the world is given by the guy on top. That leaves it open for writers to actually make things interesting by having God lie his happy little ass off. It would fallow Christian mythology but put into question how much of it is true and how much is actually just mythology.
@@sonofthewolfguardianofthef1214 , so you think God should be portrayed the way he is in the Bible? What a radically orthodox idea. Christian audiences would probably hate it.
Frank Bruder meh, still a net positive for the story.
Society declined when we stopped thinking of angles as just wheels with eyes.
I love that visual. You can create so many things with this concept.
literally what fucking loser looked at this badass mass of winged eyes and flames and was like "nah imma paint a blue eyed blonde dude instead" wth
James, you touch your hair more than a shampoo commercial model.
Because I'm worth it.
YES JAMES
YAASSSS KING
Frick now ill never stop NOTICING this! It's like telling someone the floor is SLIGHTLY slanted XD you jerk!
@@JamesTullos just use product to keep you hair in place like the rest of us. Embrace the dry wax. You deserve it! :)
Miss Sofia wipes your memories of her whenever you stop reading the book.
Miss who?
JADEBLADE HAWKBOSS Idk, when did I make this post?
What post?
It's true, I read these books, or at least some of them, I can't even remember how many. I don't remember any of it except that I did read it?
who is "miss Sofia" never heard of her, huh.
I think, the whole "you don't get reincarnated again, bc you werent baptized" could work better in other religions, bc, speaking as an amateur admittedly, abrahamic religions always seem to be definitive where you go after death. Either heaven, or hell(or purgatory), and not reincarnation, bc that concept is more common in east asian religions.
"Only real christians get reincarnated" sounds more like an anime trying to use christianity in their story, without having the slightest knowledge about christianity.
In christianity, this is usually related to what happens after the apocalypse, the idea being that the dead will literally rise from their graves (so it's not actually reincarnation of the soul into a new body because the separation of body and soul doesn't originally exist in christianity). So usually one of the conditions of being "woken up" when the time has come would be being baptised.
I think it depends on the sect of thinking and individuals in my experience. I have seen Orthodox Jews who believe in reincarnation whole heartedly. And some that only believe in the apocalypse with the donkey and the horn and the massiah.
This is so true! 😂
You still must be baptised in order to go to Heaven with the Rapture.
@@susiechoban1542 Depends on the sect. Some folks think that believing in/accepting Christ into your heart is enough, without any need for worldly acknowledgement of your conviction.
Renaissance art seems to be when we stopped depicting Angel's as flaming wheels within wheels with a million eyes
Well, there were always Angels that either looked like or at least were able to look like normal people or people with wings presumably to be a bit more palatable to mortals they interacted with and that imagery was later used to represent all angels as far back as the first Christian cults in the Roman Empire, presumably because a dude with wings is easier to draw than whatever the fuck a seraphim is supposed to be.
But Renaissance art really codified the "Angels are winged pretty good boys" trope, which is not what angels (even the human looking ones) were at all in the beginning. They were primarily God's enforcers and warriors and they weren't afraid to fuck up some sinners in the most brutal ways possible and show it off too. Flaming swords and all that.
Holy shit, just looked into that. Never realized Evangelion was a return to form.
I blame romans, when christianity spread to Rome it picked up a lot of art direction from them, and they wanted to make pretty things, middle eastern religion with eldrith abominations, dark visions and god presence literally burning you to crisp was not exactly their style.
Jakub Mike Christianity spread to “Rome” in like 300-400 years after Jesus’s birth, dude. Christian art was scarce, and really started to flourish when the newly-Christian former-pagans mixed their new religion with their own traditions. But that’s literally an entire millennium before the Renaissance era. That’s the decadence of antiquity, and what prepared the ‘mediaeval’ epoch. So no, you’re completely off-base here.
which i wish we never did. a fat baby is never gonna have to tell u BĒ NØT ÅFRĀÏÆD every time they pop up. angels are some crazy intimidating ish
Treacle is actually just a sweet syrup made during the refining of sugar. So he was just giving her sweetened milk, not drugging her.... And god, I can't believe I felt the need to supply that clarity for a series so decidedly unworthy of it.
Does James not know the Glorious Revolution Of Treacle Mine Road?
@@johannageisel5390 That apparently slipped by, though tbf, it isn't like it lasted very long >_
@@melaustin3305 How... how can you! ... * _sobs in Reg Shoe_ *
That's all well and good, but like what is happening in that scene then? Because even with hindsight it really sounds like that incarnation of Lucinda is about to die again (presumably by immolation) and Daniel is doing or giving something to her to ease the pain of passing and he's really torn up about it because this has happened to him like hundreds, maybe thousands of times.
Or is that supposed to be like metaphorical and what he's giving her to ease the pain is the time with him or the sweet milk because I guess that's her favourite drink in all her incarnations or something? It's really super unclear.
@@PhileasLiebmann i always read it as a “favourite drink but also it’ll help you be asleep/not in pain while you die in like 10 minutes” type thing especially after actually reading past that point because as far as i remember he never is said to having... “helped” it happen as far as i remember? at least not like that.
you putting the US map up for us to visualixe what u were saying was the coolest and most considerate thing ever Mr James, thank you. i didn't have to google the map and try to figure it out myself lmao
Agreed! So was adding "in the us" when mentioning hulu. It's great when people from the us acknowledge we might have no access to their subscription services, or we might but the catalogue will be different for us.
Non-usa fans of James sending love x
@@kousetsuhana I'm joining in as an European!
Ikr, people on the internet just assume you are from The US and that you know the states or only use imperial etc.
ikr!!! when he talked about it i just shrugged it off bc i didnt understand it and i wasnt willing to stop the vid to search it online but then he showed the map and i was like OH OK WOW. sending love from 🇦🇷!
ya shoutout to americans who realize there are non-americans out there
I heard the words "love triangle" and my eyes rolled harder than a bowling ball thrown by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sameee love triangles are so messy and not in a fun way
If I want to read a forbidden love story based in Christian mythology, I'll just reread "Good Omens" for the 20th time.
_"... Secondly, the Earth's a Libra."_
That or watch Supernatural from Season 4 onwards. Honestly, not one love story can beat Castiel and Dean’s-especially in this Biblical/Mythological fantasy with angels and demons genre.
Or of you want a romance with angels, but without much religion the Guild Hunter books are good. The world is quite interesting.
@@sakshikhatavkar3562 didn't castiel die immediately after confessing his love to dean.
@@Luisneospied he went to superhell i think, i dont watch spn. not that i'd know much anyway, im a good omens fan and my ship is pretty much canon. sucks for yall tho i guess
if you wanna have a big laugh: listen to James talk about Satan as a villain and imagine that he's talking about the Bible, not this series (58:54)
)))))))))
Pretty accurate though
also, him confusedly yet joyously exclaiming "Hey! I'm Korean" XD it killed me
I've added time-travel into my novel that's flawless: the character lays down, and travels forward in time by the mystic art of a long nap. It's a magical nap, so it can go as long as they want.
Amazing!
Top 10 Fantasy Powers Fans Wish Were Real
So astral projection via dreams?
how do u go back
I had a power like that before my tbi...I miss my old brain sometimes.
This series was EVERYWHERE during the Twilight knock-off boom. Every bookshop with a YA or 'Dark Romance' section (which was what they called the Twilight knock-off section,) had it.
And it seems like people are only just now remembering it existed.
I hadn't even heard of it before now. And I was in the age range for it at the time.
never read it but i had lots of friends so obsessed with these books!!
IKR, Fallen and Hush Hush were a legitimate plague back then but it seems like people forgot about Fallen
"Dark Romance" what crap. A dark romance should be actually dark and fucked up. I'm talking big age gaps, unequal power, unhealthy fixation, and tons of lies and sex. Get all up in them taboos and make the reader feel filthy, dammit!
This book is admittedly my guilty pleasure, I know it’s not perfect and it doesn’t make much sense but I love it 😅
I remember my friend and I reading this around the 7th/8th grade and we were so bored we decided to work together to make a fanfiction with Penn as the main character instead. She eventually learns witchcraft and becomes more powerful and confident wanting to save Lucinda and Daniel from their fate, trying to find a way to make them human while also slowly falling for Cam as they work together along the way.... I don't remember us finishing the story because we discovered anime. 🤣🤣🤣
“I don’t remember finishing cause we discovered anime” story of my life
This whole time I thought Luce was short for Lucifer 👀 would have been an interesting change to the story
I want somebody to write a fan fiction on this. Or even a whole new book if they actually can write a good book.
Plot twist: it was Lucifer all along
Yes! Now James is using tabs to aggressively analyze terrible books, like Krimson Rogue. This is gonna be fun! I saw the trailer for the movie a while ago and was intrigued until I realized it was a Twilight clone.
You know a book is bad when it looks like a clown vomited on the pages.
I saw the movie. I hated it... and i read the books. Was not worth the four + year wait. seriously it was finished in like 2012 i think, released in 2017. My FRIEND found it, put it on cause she knew i loved the books. yeah no.. movie was awful.
Actually, I didn’t think the movie was bad. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the word, but compared to the book? It was tolerable. Unremarkable-but tolerable. The book made me rage quit.
How are you gonna have the main character be in love with Lucifer and not do ANYTHING with that?! And to not have any actual opinion on the argument between God and Lucifer!?
Also please please do the Immortals series there is just SO MUCH content there
!!!! Such a great idea that could have gone a million ways and instead you pretty much get nothing why even make it part of the story???
Because, you know... Lucifer is just probably some Hot, powerful badboy. Not like Angel Who Hates Humanity.
(seriously, making Lucifer falling in love with Our Protagonist is always missing the definition of Lucifer.)
@@a.w.4708 I mean, biblically he was the top angel. The most powerful and beautiful of them all. That's why he's so tempting. He looks enticing. The problem occurred when that went to his head and decided he could replace God.
@@profsrlojohn635 Yes, beautiful and powerful, but not handsome, sexy and badboyish. He (or they - Lucifer don't have sex) hates humanity, and hates it mostly for it's imperfections so picturing them as imperfections-loving rock-style motor-riding Hot boy is not very this kind of Beauty. Even white diamond from Steven Universe is more accurate picture of Lucifer than this Harley dude, and she was probably created based on author's image of God, so Lucifer's opposite!
@@a.w.4708 oh I know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder however, so it's not too much of a stretch to say Lucifer, being the duplicitous individual he is, takes form of whatever someone thinks is beutiful. It seems rather in-charecter to be honest.
I want an Angel YA romance where the angel is still in the original biblical horror terror stage.
“Oh Jason, I love your amorphous form and thousands of eyes and wings. That, that is what I’ve always wanted in a (gender unconfirmed) man, eyes and wings.”
This is the monster romance we deserve
Oh-you mean just about any AU of Trueform!Castiel and Dean??
I can't believe first time my name gets used in a book as a main character (and not a crazy fairy lady) and its all f*$king horrible.
UGGHHHHH
If it makes you feel better, there's about a 0% chance of my name being used as a character name in a novel period. 😓
f
OH MY GOSH NO JOKE THE MC IN MY STORY IS ACTUALLY CALLED LUCINDA HOW IN GODS NAME
Lol I was horrified by the fact that the main character of Fallen is named Lucinda- it ain't my name or even close, but I have an OC named Lucinda whom I appreciate very much and I'm offended that her name was used in such an awful book
If it makes you feel better, one of my friend’s name is actually Luce. Just Luce. And she would be appalled as well.
When you said that the main character’s name is Luce, I was really 100% convinced that the plot twist was going to be that she was Lucifer reincarnated. But I guess that would have been too interesting
something about “i’m korean today” made me choke on my dinner.
i have no memory of finishing this series but i do remember reading the first one, one of those forgotten middle school (i think) books
I don’t know what to say but
Oli London vibes, I’m sorry koreans
I first heard about the movie adaption as an ad on RUclips that had Chinese subtitles. It was odd, to say the least...
I think that the epilogue "drugging" thing was more of like, he had known her for so long that he already knew everything about her, including what she drinks to fall asleep. And he had been giving it to her in her past lives to help her fall asleep. Not drugging her lmao
Yeah James, this accurately sums up how I feel about this series too. Now for you to read the Hush Hush series.
I don't know if I'm strong enough.
Fallen is actually boring, but Hush Hush isn't. They're equally as stupid, but at least you won't lose brain cells while reading it
I remember likening that book series when I was younger... is it really that bad? Probably lol
Oooh I don't remember anything about Hush Hush, just the fact that I hated the love interest lol
Yes, please do Hush Hush! I remember it ruining my vacation lmao
They literally pulled a Deus Ex Machina near the end
Petition for him start reading really good fan fiction that we recommend because some fan fics could be actual good novels
Wait, if Luce is a fallen angel, how come she can go into a church that Daniel can't? How come she's so killable? How come she had no memories of it? How come she has no angel-powers? Is she conceived and born and grow like a human? Why? How? Are Luce's parents special in some way? If they aren't, how are they giving birth to an angel?
Hmmm...I suspect the author did not think too hard about that twist...
From what I understand the curse was basically transforming her into a technically mortal woman except for the reincarnation, so she was actually human until God lifted it.
Which leads me to question why God tied the being human bit into the curse in the first place and didn't just turn her into a reincarnating human woman permanently and then cursed her, that would've been way more sensible, but I digress.
That still doesn't explain why Daniel didn't want to tell her that she had been an Angel before (which he must've known the whole time), which most likely might've helped them lift the curse on their own centuries ago if she'd known to control her time travel power earlier to find out what was going on. Unless he knew that for some reason Satan wanted to use that opportunity to gain the upper hand in the war, in which case why? And also Satan didn't actually need Lucinda for any of that, so… there is no point to any of this.
This is EXACTLY Anna’s plot arc in Supernatural imao. She’s chooses to fall from Heaven because human life and free will attracts her. She physically rips out her grace and hides it in a tree somewhere. She’s reborn again as a human(though the body is still her vessel and her true form is still inside the grace she’s hidden away.) She has no idea about her past until the apocalypse is nigh and she hears voices speaking inside her head. These are angels conversing with each other through a connected link inside their grace-“angel radio” if you might. Eventually the main characters get to her and help her find out that she’s actually an angel and she gets her grace back(has obligatory sex with one of the main guys because heteronormativity) and then is killed off after a couple of episodes.
@@sakshikhatavkar3562 I was thinking that too.
As soon as I heard the ending, I immediately thought "hey, I have an idea for a better ending that keeps to the theme of "our personal love is more important than anything"". At the end, all of the other armies see Luce and Daniel and are inspired by them and go "huh. Yeah, I do love my love interest more than God/Satan" and they all defect. That way, it ends with the scales still in balance or whatever, but both God and Satan are alone and have to duke shit out themselves. There, now the main characters have actually made an impact on their world, changing it for the better (because now the only people stuck in this war are the only two people who actually give a shit about it).
I like it!
Your shirt, can I just say, that mind control arc was just flawless.
Andrew Diaz Hell yeah I knew someone else would get it.
Do the Dante Valentine series. It's a steaming pile of romantic garbage, but the worldbuilding is actually kinda cool. Not to mention it has Fallen DEMONS, which is just hilarious.
How does that work? Does that make them good demons?
@@jackieelizabeth8614 No they're normal demons that 'Fall' in love with mortal woman. The woman get some powers, but the demons are basically cast out of hell and lose a lot of their power.
@@OmniforcePrime CRINGE!
@@OmniforcePrime so shouldn't they be Risen Demons since they rose from Hell?
Oh god. I remember that series. I had to tap out midway during book 2.
[James opens by showing he used the KrimsonRogue annotation system]
The book is gonna be _bad_ and that means this will be good...
brooo I remember reading this after twilight in highschool... Twilight has its faults but it is still entertaining and easy to read through. I did not finish the first book fallen I had to go back and read it a year later and it was still boring, Hell what stood out to me in this book was the villain's monologue about how dumb it was for the plot to revolve around a teenagers romance... Like seriously this book was shitting on its own premise. That was the first book I dropped solely for the lack of interest it got out of me.
So the main charcarter is called Lucinda... Such level of subtlety! What´s next? The reincarnetion of Amon-Ra is called Ramon, or maybe a latin boy is called Jesus but in his birth certificate it is spelled with a "z"...
At this point why not just cut any semblance resemblence of wit and call her: *LUCI*a *FER*nanda.
Jesus > Zesus > Zeus.
Obviously Amon Ra is the reincarnation or Amon, Lucifer son
@@maadtee6281 that one could be interesting. That the reason why amon ra is seen as a Sun god is because when he was created, the fall from heaven of Lucifer, out of the pure hatred the first angel felt, Amon combusted into existence into a ball of flames as bright as the king of asters!
Am I the only one who gets irrationally angry when an author dedicates whole paragraphs to a character's appearance? I feel like they could make their point in one to two sentences. Like, I know they're pandering to the Deviant Art crowd, but it's just so uninspired.
I get wanting to paint a good picture of who your character is, and they can even have all this paragraphs about that, just spread them more across the book. Don't put it all in a big exposition dump; they can give one, maybe two paragraphs of appearance (if they are not incredibly long paragraphs), then give us some story, then later put another one or two appearance paragraphs, and just keep doing that for all the characters they want.
When it's all at once is just *so boring*
The best thing is give overall appearance when you first intro the character (general build/height/hair colour/length/dark or light eyes) and then gradually introduce bits whenever another character is close to them like "x noticed the small scar beside ys mouth" "x was shaken by the :insert emotion: in ys :insert colour: eyes"
Exorikk I’ve just assumed it was a rule of thumb that you should never do that. Besides, I always found it pretentious. Personally, I prefer to describe something that stands out about the character. For example, my protagonist has grey eyes and it’s something people tend to notice about him first, especially because it contrasts with his dark skin. I find trickling in information about their appearance is more fun. Like there’s one point where he’s sleeping next to the man he loves and his partner traces the shape of his nose and remarks how he never used to have a hump. And the protagonist responds with something along the lines of “it was broken by a friend of mine. Never left my face undefended after that lesson.”
I lap that up, as I am a description hoe. I could read an entire book of someone just describing something. Interesting how we’re on the exact different sides.
Aumima Mimadino we love that trashy fanfic 😂
I just realized how much this reminds me of those weird quiz websites for teens where they'd have a "choose your own adventure" type quiz with extremely edgy love interests...
I actually read a extremly good time-travel story recently. (It's a fanfiction, but hear me out) It uses the concept that you don't send your physical body back in time, but your conciousness. So you just land in your body when it was further back in time. The story was awesome, had me on the edge of my seat
What's it called? I'm intrigued.
So like the movie The Butterfly Effect?
So like Xmen days of future past?
Oooh, that's sounds similiar to a movie in my country named "Probudím se včera" (I wake up yesterday), where the guy travel 30 years into the past and it's kinda funny. (Like one scene, he's in school and has Russian class and gets send to the board to be tested, but his present self already forgot it, so know, he doesn't remember it either now and he has to improvise)
Like "Soma" (rpg).
I never read those books, because in the midst of the twilight hype this book was called "Engelsnacht" (Angels Night) and had such an atrociously bad looking cover that I never even picked it up in the store to read the description. Turns out I didn't miss a thing.
"was ist diese Pferdescheiße ?" that got me dying of laughter... you missed the e at the end of scheiße, you just said scheiß, but that was honestly impressive ^^
Is that...a spongebob anime shirt?
I really like how u are the most forgiving critical reviewer
I think the writers basically wrote each book as a season of a TV show. Big cliffhanger ending, lots of filler, with a twist around sweeps week.
That title... This is gonna be good 🙂
Ok so Insta love is so annoying. It's so unrealistic that even in a fictional setting it takes me out of the story completely.
Like no one acts like that. XD if you make people act like not real people, then they don't feel like real people.
Like those characters that have only 1 character trait. Example; "The Bully" , "The blonde", "The love interest who for some reason is completely perfect in every way and for some reason loves a dull girl who isn't pretty at all apparently"
Liz x x the bad boy who smokes cigarettes and has a dark past
it would've been so funny if she sees him for the first time and waxes poetic about his eyes and good looks and then he opens his mouth and he's just a huge asshole and all her feelings fall apart. the rose colored glasses immediately crack. and from then on she keeps running into him but absolutely hating it cuz he's an asshole. also with the context that they have reincarnated and loved each other in past lives it would be even funnier. but nah.
That description of God throwing Lucifer away faster than the speed of light times the speed of sound was so cancerous and cringy.
"Gospeed" is probably the dumbest and funniest thing I got from this review. lmao
the author owes copyright money to killua
Back in high school I read first book and was convinced that the twist will be that Lucy is actually lucifer but I guess not lmao
I remember reading the first book when I was 13/14 years old and I hated every single character in this book with the exception of Penn (not that I loved her, but she was at least an okay person) and then she just dies and I was like "wait, I LITERALLY have no reason to keep reading this series because I really don't give a f*** about what will happen to any of them".
I tried to read the first book, and almost died of boredom halfway trough.
I did not remember having read this entire series until you recapped everything, that's how memorable this was.
"God was kinda being a dick here" is a quote I'm gonna try to use more often
Hey, I know it's not a story or a book but Dark (the Netflix series) is very good at doing time travelling stuff. Don't know whether or not you would count it tho :(
Your description is amazing, also nice Spongebob the Anime shirt!
Suponjibobu
"[…] there were always little morsels that I could get into, that I could enjoy, but it never amounted to much of anything."
So it's like… the Sherlock of Twilight clones?
You might wanna check out the TV show Dark on Netflix. I found it the tightest written piece of entertainment I’ve (ever?) seen. As a whole product, the entire thing is a masterpiece, and I think you’ll find they did something truly extraordinary in it.
i have been binging that since last week, it's really fucking good
I loved this series when I was a teenager but now that I'm older I can't believe I liked it
I've read this series, given to me by a relative that thought it was a YA fantasy novel (since i was into books like Maze runner and percy jackson at the time) and since i didn't want to let it go to waste i decided to give it a go and boy oh boy, let's just say i put Luce in the same shelf as Bella from Twilight and Elena from TVD and leave it at that.
Now confirmed, James loves slow burn 🥰
Seeing the covers in this thumbnail unlocked a forgotten memory
Man your reading muscles must have abs of their own. How fast do you read and how!?
Me buying fallen when I was 11 because of the picture on the cover >
finally i can know what the hell happens in these books! i recognize the cover of the first book from middle school when it was displayed in the library, but i think i got a couple pages in and nope'd out.
I swear your grown-out hair has it's own presence in this video 😂. Also, as soon as the concept of the God being (maybe) not so good came up I couldn't help thinking about Onision's book. And you brought it up. And put a HxH reference into the vid. It came together so well for me, my brain got the references. A satisfying meal.
You actually committed the crime already when you read the books
I am really really hoping for James' takes on like.. the Vampire Academy series and its spinoffs, or the Mortal Instruments because those series were also beloved tween schlock for me, and i think they might actually hold up slightly better
Christian mythology is under utilized? Have you watched any anime ever?
I was just thinking of black clover
Seraph of the End.
Devilman Crybaby
Ah yes my favourite part of christianity: Depressed Fanta kids.
That’s what I was thinking. Christian mythology has been used so commonly in Western literature for so many centuries that I just groan whenever it shows up. I fully stopped watching Supernatural when they introduced angels and demons because I was so disappointed in them for doing the same old tired shit.
I'm so glad you addressed how Daniel treats her. There was this trend in ya when I was a teen where the romance leads were all kind of assholes and I never understood the appeal.
Am I the only one who thinks the biggest inspiration for Cthulhu’s appearance is probably just biblical angels
How
Or the author living by the sea and seeing all the crap that fishermen bring to market every day.
I was like "oh nice i wanted to read that book so let's watch it." After a few minutes i realized i saw another review of it already and how BAD it is and was just sad xD
Hell the description on the beggining made me think on lupinranger vs patoranger
Very long comment incoming, with spoilers from the books.
I was anxiously waiting for you to cover these books. Personally, I really enjoyed the Fallen series despite its flaws. I have a guilty pleasure for stories with forbidden love and with angels as part of the plot, I was all in. This book series is not for everyone, and your criticism is very informative and well thought out. I believe Lauren is a fantastic writer, but she does better with her side characters than with Daniel and Luce, despite thinking they’re alright in my opinion.
For me, Torment was the weakest book. It’s basically Fallen again, but with Luce having feelings for Miles and transferring to another school. The ending did leave suspense when she began to travel through Announcers, but it was at the end. My favorite either has to be Passion or Fallen in Love. Passion is really interesting for me as it shows Luce’s past lives and Bill (despite being the obvious villain Lucifer) was a snarky but somewhat funny companion. Fallen in Love highlights the side characters, who help make the books tolerable, have their own stories of love, either sacrificing the chance of being with them so they can be happy (Roland), or another take of forbidden love that will have consequences due to the inevitable battle (Arianne). That said, I’m glad you enjoyed Passion despite your overall opinion on the series.
At first, I was not into the ending for Rapture, but considering that Daniel and Luce don’t have to worry about the curse every 17 years, having a final life together is honestly bittersweet. But I do see your reasons on why it’s a middle finger to you.
I thought it was interesting to have the focus be on Cam in Unforgiven since he also has a love interest he keeps reuniting with, but the ending... After reading Waterfall, Lauren’s endings have been cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. I was so confused I had to read the last chapter twice and I still don’t know what exactly happened. Lauren could have ended the series with Rapture and stayed with it. I believe it’s more fulfilling to come to our conclusions on how the other angels live their lives as Luce and Daniel are reborn as humans.
And yeah... the less said about the movie the better. I loved the casting for Daniel. Jeremy Irvine was a perfect choice for him and he’s the reason why I was able to get through the movie. The way the distribution company advertised it was absolutely awful. The budget was also the reason why the movie was bad. I can understand being at a different location than Georgia to make it cheap, but the special effects were just... why?
And I’m really curious, do you plan to read the Teardrop series? It started out interestingly, but the second book made me frustrated because it was meant to be a trilogy, and Waterfall ended so abruptly that I was honestly sad at how a series with interesting potential was wasted. If you do plan to read the series, be sure to look up the extra story Lauren posted on Wattpad, but read it after Teardrop so you can understand.
Even though we have different opinions, I’m glad you covered this! Looking forward to more of your videos.
Edit: regarding your question about Luce’s parents, I believe they probably just have no memory of her as history basically gets rewritten. I asked this to myself too when I first read Rapture, but I think it makes a bit of sense that her parents are still living, but did not have any children due to Luce being reborn.
Maybe it was just because I was in middle school when it was popular, but I feel like Angel Fiction, and playing around with that mythos actually did have it's time in the sun.
Like... There's this series, there's Blue Bloods, there's Unearthly, there's Halo, there's Hush Hush... And those were the popular ones, there's oodles that weren't as popular as well. For what it's worth, Blue Bloods is an angel/vampire/reincarnation hybrid story, and is by far the best of the bunch. I don't see people talk about it very often. Maybe it just wasn't as well known?
OMFG I remember reading these books. I stopped at the second book and I wrote in my review: This book is called Torment, which is about right because that's what reading this felt like.
Watching this video and hearing the protagonist’s name after binging The Owl House is a trip.
james. dont hurt yourself with these books.
As someone who also hates badly done time travel, the only media that I saw do it right is the Netflix TV show 'Dark'. I recomend it
I've read the entire series and only because I was in boarding school, I was desperate for the escapism. it started so well then just went downhill really bad. I cant even recommend them to anyone.
but
I definitely recommend The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren which as far as I remember I enjoyed.
34:40 have you ever heard of "C°ntinuum: roleplaying in The Yet"? It basically does just that. It's a tabletop rpg where you play as time travelers, and doing things like creating paradoxes and meeting yourself are actually part of the mechanics. For example, if you, say, somehow get stuck in an Old West prison, you could just declare that your future self just comes out of nowhere and lets you out. However, creating too many unresolved paradoxes slowly writes you out of existence. The solution to this is to resolve them. For the example above, you would have to go back and give yourself the key at some point to get rid of your Frag (the condition that represents your level of "fading out of existence-ness." It's a pretty neat game and I brought it up because I thought it might be something you would enjoy.
James: The 3rd one is pretty good actually. I enjoyed that one.
2017 Me, who stopped reading it halfway through and hid it behind better books: *yeah, sooo good*
"Hölle" in the thumbnail is weird. The Umlaut looks like the bottom part of the M.
He meantioned Darksiders, that only proves he is a man of culture.
The best and only time travel that ever worked was HG Wells and George Pal's version of the Movie.
so Satan is defeated...
by an *_ACTUAL_* DEUS EX MACHINA?
Like... you could've done what Eru Ilúvatar (the Creator of Tolkien's world) did when Gandalf was near death after fighting Durin's Bane, and Eru allowed him to be reborn as Gandalf the White due to him staying faithful to his promise as an Istari (who were the 5 wizards)
the promise before they came to middle earth was basically, don't own land, don't show your full strength (so yes, Gandalf was always holding back, but in the books it was alluded to his more powerful and ancient strength), and make sure to thwart, or at least stall Sauron and make sure the ring doesn't find his way back (and if possible, help whoever owns it destroy it)
An hour+ video and paper tabs? This is some bootleg KrimsonRogue and I am HERE FOR IT
I'm actually amazed if you read books so fast and release these reviews, unless you have read them in the past or something which I doubt.
His backlog of books must be huge for such consistent uploads.
i just had a painful breakdown, but upon opening youtube i still instinctively search for your channel. maybe hearing your voice calms me down lol
THE LONGER HAIR LOOKS SO GOOD OHMYLORDDDD
You talking about falling out of love after who knows how many reincarnations reminds me of an episode of Blood Ties, where that sort of happens.
Nice review. And you got the Suponjibobu shirt on.
I want to see him do one on the raven boys
i honestly cannot believe you had the strength to read these books in 2020, i read them starting in 2009 when i was in high school, they were awful then and awful now, hats off to you for getting through them. also i feel OLD now :’)
I didn't even know there was a movie.
James referenced Dylan is in trouble I can die happy
I think I've repressed the phase I had at around age 13 where I was OBSESSED with these books as they came out.
Getting to know angels and maybe falling in love with one:
“I’m the one who gripped you right and raised you from perdition”
OMG Cass! S4&S5 Supernatural angels were ICONIC!!!
OMG I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT. I mean seriously-if they can’t do an angel romance like Cas and Dean they just shouldn’t do it. It saves us from being introduced to such crappy titles.
@@sakshikhatavkar3562 Oh, definitely. And the angels from SPN may be rude, but y'know they're better then this ya representation
Omfg😭😭😭