WHY I GAVE AURORA RISING ONE STAR
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- COME TO BOOK NET FEST: booknetfest.co...
Other Jay Kristoff video: • Video
Patreon: / readswithrachel
Commissions: ko-fi.com/read...
Merch: www.bonfire.co...
Wishlist: www.amazon.com...
Support Roma children and youth in Ukraine:
chuffed.org/pr...
Support Palestinian children: www.pcrf.net/
SUPPORT INDIA DURING THEIR COVID CRISIS:
donation links
-www.careindia....
-www.projecthop...
SUPPORT COLOMBIA:
resources and info
-mailchi.mp/cb9...
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Resources:
-Massive list of places and people to donate to: nymag.com/stra...
-Find a protest or fundraiser near you: / events
Find literature to read
Watch Vee Kativhu's video on recommending books to learn about racism: • 10 books you MUST read...
-Support some Black youtubers by watching Myonna Reads' playlist of Black booktubers: • Black Booktubers
Support my channel
-Patreon: / readswithrachel
-Tip me on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/read...
-Commission me for a video book review: ko-fi.com/read...
-Use my link to try BOOK OF THE MONTH: www.mybotm.com...
-Use my link to get $10 off your first Instacart order: inst.cr/t/VTNr...
Follow me on socials
TIKTOK: / rachelwithreads
INSTAGRAM: / readswithrachel
Join my channel membership to become a Comrade in Literature and get access to perks:
th-cam.com/channels/DybFQWoc9NC87xgTD61Zxg.htmljoin
Jay Kristoff writes books like I run my D&D campaigns; ripping off plots that I like from movies and video games and hope my players don't notice.
Then it should add some context that Jay actually runs D&D campaigns :P Nevertheless I really like that about his writing, though Aurora rising wasn't really my thing.
I'm only 7 minutes in, but you can't both have "they are the elite of the elite" vibes AND "they are outcast found family" vibes in the same story. You can make them elite and bond over time. Like star trek! The crew was always eccentric and unique and bonded, but they weren't outcasts. I think of TNG: Geordi had experimental tech implanted into his face so he could see. Data was the only android of his kind, etc. but they weren't "outcasts"
It's the desire for the cool factor of being "punk/rebels/outcasts/bad" with none of the follow through.
"They are outcasts" and somehow all of them are conventionally attractive, yeah.
Forever tired of this lol
Lots of queer people are both outcasts and conventionally attractive though 🤨
@@asdfghjklasdfghjkl321 But that's because the het people are mad they can't have them whole other issue lol
@@mittag983 Omg fair enough this made me laugh hahahahaha 🫡😂😂👏👏
I really don‘t think the two things are ever mutually exclusive.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but why are literal teenagers allowed to have a ship of their own with no adults? Ships are huge, expensive, dangerous. Makes no sense.
You'd think, but I know this teenager who is part of this "civilian branch of the air force" type organization and they just let these kids fly planes around. She literally got a plane for her graduation.
I mean you're not wrong. To be able to use ships, they would at least be taught by an adult (the person who they are familiar with) from when they were kids and travel on a ship with that adult.
I blame Ender's Game
@@unwrittenpaige7791 Civil Air Patrol! They do have a cadet program, but the organization isn't run by them. The airport in my small city is also a CAP base and it can be a great way for young people to get into aviation with a goal of civilian or military aviation. It's been around since 1936 but didn't become the civilian Air Force Auxillary until 1948 . It's a good gateway to aviation for young people ages 12 through 18 and is very much a civilian organization (though it is part of AF) . I had a couple friends in high school that were cadets. Though no one just "let [these] kids fly planes around." It's pretty highly regulated and no kid's just hopping into a plane by themselves, but one of my high school CAP friends got their pilot's license a couple years before they got their driver's license, lol. It's a pretty cool organization! They do a lot of emergency medical stuff (like flying blood and organs for transplants) as well as disaster response and things like that.
Here's some info for anyone who's interested, it's a pretty cool organization (I work for a *very* rural ambulance service in the absolute middle of nowhere in Wyoming, and Civil Air Patrol coordinates a lot of our search and rescue/transport stuff)!
www.gocivilairpatrol.com/
There's even a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode about how horrifically dangerous in every way it is for teenagers to have a ship of their own with no adults. The Valiant. It ends... how it's gonna end if you put literal teenagers in command of a huge, expensive, dangerous ship... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valiant_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)
i just think it’s interesting that the sociopath and weapons person are the only black/brown-adjacent characters in the group
I am in the camp of "everything has been done before" but there's a difference between that and stitching together different stories. It's not like they're taking a bit of this and a bit of that and mixing it all up, it's more like "Oh, now we're in the Firefly part. Oh, and now we've just transitioned into the Guardians of the Galaxy part."
You FORGOT ONE!
An "Ancient One" who has a big mission and there's an Important Stone. AND she has an A name. Yeah that's Final Fantasy 7.
the whole "fated mates" trope is always odd to me, but i think there are ways it can be done really well. i haven't read the book so i don't know if this is a case of that but, and not to imply that Jay Kristoff has any moral value, i enjoy the fact that Kal was like "hey heres this thing that makes me have feelings for u, but i don't want to force you into doing anything, and if it makes u uncomfortable, i'm willing to remove myself from the situation" like YES. now THATS what we call shelving your agenda!
anyway i hate to say it but the plant idea sounds so cool to me... i'm almost tempted to read the book just for that and because everyone in the comments is saying Fin is a great character but idk...
I enjoyed this book the first time I read it, I thought the plant stuff was really cool, I remember liking the Kal and Aurora thing (though I hadn't seen firefly and felt the star trek stuff in a vacuum was a cute acknowledgement rather because I didn't know about Kristoff), if you're thinking about reading it I have to tell you it's SO LONG. It's a big brick of a book, it's like three inches thick. Part of that is stylistic things like the paragraph-long chapters and the stupid sentient iPad thing (I'm surprised Rachel didn't mention it, there's a weird sentient iPad that's supposed to be like Future Wikipedia but it's Snarky and Quippy and I hated it even when I liked the rest of the book) but a lot of it is that it's genuinely really long for how little stuff happens. It's not an afternoon read.
I agree with your perspective to an extent, but it’s interesting to think of the ways in which aurora could have responded. If she had said, ‘yeah, okay, we’ll I didn’t really like you anyway and I’m not attracted to you’ would Kal have been like ‘oh, okay’, or would it realistically have been ‘wait, what? That’s it? Fine, I guess, I mean it’s your choice’ followed by a bunch of ways he tries to subtly pressure her into accepting him instead of accepting the choice she made, aka being a ‘nice guy’. Would he truly have accepted it, or would it have been this thing that simmered under the surface? I haven’t read it either, that could be what happens, but realistically it’s unlikely. I don’t believe for a second Kristoff or Kaufman wrote this book with the prospect of aurora eventually saying no to that bond, which, when you think about it, doesn’t make it any different from any other way that other books approach the mating concept. Only here it’s done in a ‘cool, not-like-other-people’ way bc of course Kristoff can write tropes that every other female author is hounded for and it’s better when he does it bc he’s a guy.
You can like media written by problematic authors! I think death of the author is very real. Honestly while listening i also thought this could be for me and maybe i will give it a checkout from the library or buy it used if i can find it. If you wanna read something but don’t want to support the artist there’s ways for that :))))
Personally, I thought the book was great!
I don’t watch/read a lot of sci-if, so I wasn’t as annoyed over the lack of originality as some people. I loved a lot of the characters (Finian was absolutely iconic, Zila, Tyler and Auri were pretty cool, Kal was a little weird to me (but he did have some cool lines tho), Scarlet was ok, and although Cat annoyed me a little she DEFINITELY made up for it in the last few chapters)
Also:
-Kal’s weird connection to Auri is less of a mating bond and a lot more like Soulmatism imo
-The plant zombie virus thing is EXACTLY as cool as it sounds
-the found family vibes are strong with this one
Overall, I thought this book was pretty neat! Is it super original? I guess not. Is it my favourite? Not by a long shot. Would I tell you to give it a shot and find a free audio book somewhere? Sure!
I think he just saw that fated mates were a thing because of Sarah J Maas and decided to follow the trend
The mind control plant thing immediately made me think of the Thorian from first Mass Effect game, bcs it's a giant ancient plant that got unearthed and took over an entire colony via spores and whatnot, intends to spread across the galaxy, can communicate with its victims via hive mind etc etc
I don't think that was the first time that concept had even popped up in a BioWare game, either, I'm pretty sure they used that in Jade Empire first. Mother or something like that. BioWare just likes mind control plants, I think.
@@ObsidianNebula00 Can we count 'Bodysnatchers'for this, or what the movie was called again?
I also thought of the Proto-Molecule from The Expanse
@@lilmaibe technically Body snatchers would be more accurate, yeah.
I thought of the Klyntar, but maybe I'm just differently nerdy from you.
I'm a long-time Jay Kristoff Hater after trying and failing TWICE to read "Stormdancer" but ummm. I'm looking at the picture of the crew, and Tyler and Scarlett automatically make me think "that's Scooby-Doo Fred and Scooby-Doo Daphne".
That's all I have to add here.
I LOVE titan ae, but I have to say Treasure Planet was my favorite sci-fi animated movie lol 10/10 love this review lol
VALID
I LOVED treasure planet so I’m taking this as a rec for titan ae lol
1995’s “Ghost in the Shell” is top of my list.
Treasure Planet is so good, literally one of (if not *the* one) my favorite Disney movies
I’m just gonna say, I’ve read more unique and coherent sci-fi world building in 8k word alien smut than what has been described in this book.
Even sub-par fanfics have given me more entertainment than most books lately, but it's also because I already like the characters and don't have to suffer through mediocre newbies
If a BIPOC author had written this book, they would have been torn to shreds
I was wondering why you said that, but then I saw that this girl has a damn Angela Davis book purposefully propped up in her shelf as if she is so proud she is following a damn communist. 😂
Anyway, thanks for helping me realize to not give this girl any more of tlmy time. c:
Hafsah Faizal can attest to this.
Got accused of ripping off a white lady’s heist book just for daring to write her own heist story.
@@Ozarka0 bro is epic mormom brony😂
@@Ozarka0 She's a grown woman, not a 'girl'.
@@Ozarka0 More than half the TH-camrs you subscribe to you'd say are communists of these are your standards 😂
I think the reason people like this book is because the bar is just so low nowadays that if a book has an ok language and is not copy-pasting its own paragraphs as "recap" to tell a new character what happened it is deemed fantastic. People don't care about original ideas, they like the prechewed tropes the entertainment industry serves them on a platter.
Honestly this book is a great listen when you're driving or cleaning or doing anything because even when adhd makes you zone out for a few minutes nothing will happen that would make you lose the "plot".
Def agree on the last part, when im doing anything having a fun, tropey book in the background is a must. only problem is finding one that hits that mark without it being either eye rollingly painful or just smut/romance.
I love how this video is slightly out of focus but Rachel's charm gaslights you into thinking you're just seeing things.
DONT TELL THEM SHHHHHH
I thought it was my glasses this whole time!!
"what do you want, Ancient One???" "For Jay Kristoff to have a single original thought"
There's nothing WRONG with taking ideas and remixing them, the real problem here is that it's not done WELL.
I disagree. Sure, you can parody ideas or concepts that others have explored and put your own unique twist on it, but to rip off entire plots and characters is not okay. We don't give a pass to plagiarism. 👏👏👏
@@hope2dust I said "remix." I haven't read this book, so I'm not defending it directly, but I highly doubt that it's the EXACT plot and characters of Firefly and GotG, that's what makes this a remix. That isn't plagiarism, there is no totally original idea or a plot. There was a huge trend in fiction a few years ago to re-write common fairy tales. I would hardly call Robin McKinley a plagiarist because she used a common folk tale as the skeleton of Deerskin, following every plot point and only changed a few details. When a "copy" is good, we call it an homage, or a deconstruction, we only demonize it when it's bad. It's not bad because it copied, you noticed the copy because it was bad.
*Edited for clarity
@@wastedinspiration Yeah... No. Sorry. Retelling a fairytale which has no current copyright is very different from straight up using the plot of a current mainstream work. I don't care what the definition of plagiarism is. I go by what feels right or wrong. If you were to adapt Firefly with pretty much all the same plot beats and simply change the names of characters, I don't care how well it's done. It's stealing. You have ripped off someone else's work. I'm perfectly okay with little winks and nods to pay homage, but those should be no more than easter eggs. That's not the same thing as copying the entire plot. Authors should have some self respect and originality..
@@hope2dust you can plagiarize without violating copyright, I wasn't talking about copyright. I was talking PLAGIARISM, which is why I brought up something that was in public domain, specifically to avoid a copyright argument. Yeah, if someone literally lifts plot and dialogue from a source and only changes the names, that would be plagiarism. Simply following a plot structure and story beats is NOT plagiarism. Honestly, I didn't read the book AS I ALREADY MENTIONED but from her description of it, I could list at least 10 different sources that have the same general plot or several of these elements. It's so flipping general, that, honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. You can call it lazy, but it's not really plagiarism unless the Firefly and GotG team are ALSO guilty of it.
I mean, heck, This Alien Shore was basically the plot of Firefly and CS Friedman wrote that in '98. And Guardians of the Galaxy might as well have been Farscape: The Movie.
Yeah this guy used the pulse function on the inspiration blender instead of puree.
4 years later and I'm still mad Cat and Scarlet didn't get together
I WILL NEVER NOT BE UPSET ABOUT IT
lmao 😭 I actually hated Cat, I thought she was annoying.
@@BunnyandMoon Literally same she bothered me the whole time 😭
You said "she has been asleep for 200 years and joins this ragtag group" and all i could think about was Voltron 😂
Just want to mention: Zila being referred to as a sociopath is definitely bad rep in at least one way: what was once called sociopathy has been called Anti-Social Personality Disorder since at least the DSM-IV, possibly earlier and the DSM-V came out in December of 2013 so yeah, it's a very outdated term.
Also the drawing an image over and over while unconscious and getting visions is literally Clary from the The mortal instruments lmao so funny considering cassie clare is the great mimicker!
listen man i dont mind if ppl take elements from other stories and use them in their own. thats FINE. but if you do it, i EXPECT YOU to put your own, fresh spin on it and do something different with it, not just take it beat for beat.
these days its really hard to come up with something that hasnt been done in some way at least once. i understand that completely and i think its a little tryhard to claim that you can easily come up w smth that hasnt been done yet 100%. but i think you can easily take something from a different story but *make it be different and your own in some other way, and not just file the serial numbers off.*
anyway i just wanted to say that so people dont get the idea that taking stuff/concepts from other stories is 100%ly bad all the time, sometimes the way you rail against that type of thing in reviews like this makes me anxious youre one of the people who thinks that way, but i understand that my anxiety also owns my brain.
ty for coming to my ted talk.
in conclusion: jay kristoff sucks.
"...gateway to hating Jay Kristoff." is such a mood.
As someone with dark triad traits, oh my, oh I don't know... I am very flustered right now, I am torn. I'm deeply, deeply touched that you think people like sociopaths deserve good representation, too, but it scares me to even consider letting that truth out into the world. (I'm not a bad person, I do use an external set of ethics tho, and people i trust to help me maintain those boundaries, because my first impulse is machination.)
I thought it's normal to use an external set of morals because my own morals are weird if I would follow them I'll be in jail
I had to look up what dark triad traits were, but yes, unless the thing tying a group together is inherently harmful in and of itself (think bigots and abusers), all groups deserve at least some positive representation. Something like ASPD may statistically make you more prone to warped morals, but that doesn't mean every "sociopath" is irredeemably evil or even evil at all. Granted, I do think it's important not to overdo it in certain cases because we don't want bad-faith actors trying to normalize or romanticize bad behavior common within the group, but every group deserves to have at least one example of positive representation, for aspirational purposes if nothing else.
That's just called taking accountability of a mental illness. Good on you for doing so.
Lots of people use external ethics, so that is okay. Just because you function differently doesn't mean you are inherently made for evil. A lot of people that do bad things are people without any mental diagnosis.
Guardians of the Galaxy was the first thought I had re a group of outlaw characters much more so than Leigh Bardugo 's creation but they're pretty similar too
Well Bardugo's characters also are all attractive and many respected them except Wylan well at least they had actual gay characters though they felt like they were written by a het woman
@@mittag983 the book sounds like they borrowed the plot from several scifi and fantasy IPs. What a mess
I read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet earlier this year and if you want a fun book about a ragtag crew, definitely check it out.
Yes Becky Chambers! Record of a Spaceborn Few is one of my all time favorites.
I'm sad those characters don't have another book tho
@@mollyapterosI was in a really griefy place when I read Record Of A Spaceborn Few and yet it made me feel so… hopeful. Loved it.
Mechanics, engineers and alchemists are always the best characters in ensemble crews imho. It's what i enjoy about playing inventors and artificers so much in tabletop games. There's a part of me that always worries that my writing is too derivative of media I like. "Man, I'd love something like this but with less of those tropes I hate and more trans characters." I guess that's where the difference lies. I wanna write because I feel like there are things missing or things we desperately need more of. This book feels like stuff I've read/watched/played before but slightly to the left.
sci-fi has always been a love-hate thing for me because it's riddled with white "creatives" who steal from asian cultures and whittle us down to an aesthetic/funny language (ex: queen amidala's outfit = mongolian traditional wear, jedi's cloaks = japanese yukata, the entire 'cyberpunk' genre being based off of nightlife chinatown, firefly) so i'm always hesitant to dive into a sci-fi series not written by bipoc or i have to shove my discomfort deep down. i definitely do not trust jay kristoff (nor kaufman after the shitstorm they stirred with minareads) so i'm glad for this review because i'm curious but not curious enough to put myself through mr plagiarism. thank you for suffering so that we don't have to 🤣💖 ALSO YAY! first month i'm a patron 🥳🥳
Okay, I kinda feel spoken too...
Because my stories get inspiered from media and stuff I love and like.
And what do I like? Well Anime, Manga, webtoons, Lightnovels... From Japan and China.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and Heaven Official's Blessing took a huge roll in my insporation. I love these stories, I'm a fan...
So yeah... Some of my character wear smth like Hanfus and if I listen to Chinese and japanese music it gets kinda connected.
But I'm white, so I can't just do it...
So idk if it's the better alternative, but if I would write them, I eould say smth "robes" and the language of magic (I can't create my own fantasy language, I don't understand it.. So I wouldn't write that language anyways, just translate it)
I'm a huge fan and man, I just love manga, manhua and so on.
I don't know hiw people feel about that that come from that region, and even the opinions can differ.. So I just don't know...
It's high fantasy, so i guess robes would fit perfect, then I can add DnD inspo and other stuff too, if I write it down.
is that the best how I could handle it? Idk.
I just felt spoken too... Because "steal from asia" - I don't wanna steal, I just love stories from there and get inspiered... Maybe it doesn't help that I don't consume much anymore from westen? our reGion? White region? What... Idfk, my english isn't that good
I read Edward Said's Orientalism during my freshman year of college. It ended my infatuation with CS Lewis & the like, but it's taken me far too long to see Lucas for what he was, a thief. His work with Campbell was very "western canon worship" but that now seems like an expensive smokescreen for what he was doing - cartoonifying other cultures and then remixing stereotypes and cultural ephemera and calling it "creative"
@@farnregen If you need help with a fantasy language, try substitution ciphers!
For example, move every letter three places down. So A becomes D, B becomes E, C becomes F, etc. There's 26 letters in the alphabet, so there's 26 combinations to use. You would need to write down which letter becomes which (obviously) and keep it by you while you write. You also would need to mention there's a cipher system before starting the story. It challenges your reader to think and solve the puzzles.
And before you ask, yes. I'm a Gravity Falls fan.
@Montana Nerd will that happened most in the prequels.... tbh I don't think it was on purpose. As for the aesthetics in the OT, Lucas has openly said he was in part inspired by The Seven Samurai.
I dunno. It's clear he's taken inspiration from other cultures. But I think even those who try not to probably end up doing so. Designing a space culture that is truly original is probably impossible.
@@abhainn35 Ahhh, that could help a lot, because the language of magic gets used in magic spells, souls/magic beings use that language... And in one story even a folk... But they get killed (beside two, the protagonist and his sister... But some souls from that folk still are on that planet and can't get rest, feel hatred towards humans)
But the protagonists understands the language very good, so that conversations could still be readable (german atleast xD)
i borrowed this from the library saw it was by jay kristoff and immediately returned it so im excited to see what rachel has to say abt it
Whenever I see jay name on a book I don't pick it up
@@angelaholmes8888extremely real of you
I got this book before I knew more about Kristoff. Man do I wish I was warned before. Do not like that man, do not like this book. DNFed it😭😭😭
With all this mixing of other stories, I feel like this book has become more of a cocktail than anything else 😭
I think he might've been attempting to reference Doctor Who as well, and it's making me hurl because it just ended up producing the worst moniker in the book. "Captain Hotness" could be a spoof of Captain Harkness, as in Jack. Aurora's whole "girl out of time" thing makes it seem pretty likely
I thought of Slaughterhouse-5, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time
Wasn't Clara also a "girl lost in time"? Or maybe Amy?
A spacefaring warrior race with a tenuous alliance with humankind??? We got a Klingon ripoff too!
I will never stop being upset that Finian was in this series because I wish he had been in literally ANYTHING else. He’s genuinely one of my favorite YA characters and he deserved better than being stuck in this garbage 🤪
straight up how i feel about zila especially after the final book
Of course Finian is an interesting character, he’s Spock
I just learned that i dont watch enough movies cause everytime you were like GUESS WHAT THIS REMINDS ME OF i just went STARWARS!!!
the whole "girl out of time, who's been in cryo for 200 years and wakes up to find her world flipped turned upside down" thing is just the protagonist from Fallout 4, and the plant dudes remind me of the plant vault from Fallout: New Vegas. smh.
Firmly agree, Titan A.E is both a movie of my childhood and one of the best sci fi movies to ever exist ever
Purple is definitely your color! 💜 I just found your channel like a week or so ago and I’ve been binging all your videos. You’re now my fav booktuber! I appreciate your content 💕
Thank you so much!!
Pretty sure he stole the plant thing from Mass Effect.
I listened to the audio book like two years ago and admittedlay kinda loved it, never having read Jay Kristoff before. The voice actors were pretty good as far as I recall, I liked most of the characters, the plot was...I don't remember much of that. This will be interesting
Edit: Forgot to mention, I quit the series in book 2 after they used one of my least liked tropes ever
At least we can all agree Fin is the best part of this book
Cat was entertaining in the audio book, I really liked her VA
I really don't know if this helps, but when Aurora meets Kal, she has already seen Aliens before so...maybe it gets old? Can't imagine it getting old that quickly, especially with a literal space elf, but that's just me
I'm starting to think I had this positive impression because I don't really watch much scifi. Based on what I liked I should probably watch Guardians of the Galaxy though
there were like 2 things I enjoyed about the second book, one of them being to learn more about Zila. There was so much I disliked though, I'm torn between saying "yes" because I want to feel vindicated and wanting you to not read it because...it got hard to get through at times
As someone who hasn't had the time to watch Titan AE even though she wants to, but HAS watched Treasure Planet more than once....LET ME TELL YOU I WAS NOT HAPPY!!!!
The libraries in my area have a trivia competition using maybe eight books picked from different genres. Aurora Rising was our sci-fi book. I was super excited for it but I ended up quitting halfway through because I was just so bored.(I read the other books, I swear)
I'm super disappointed I didn't recognize the firefly rip off. The crew exploring the creepy dangerous planet you're not supposed to go to? Idk if it's a trope but thats literally the plot of Serenity.
The buzz lightyear clips😂 needs some from the old animated show!
I thought Finn was the best but because everything had been ripped off from somewhere I feel like I just haven't found his original series yet? So if anyone is like 'hey no wait, Finn was totally stolen from (This thing) then please share and let us know! Jay Kristoff is the boy who cried 'character', i cannot believe Finn is an original creation from Jay. (Sorry Ann, guilty by association)
Also, the whole ship stealing by River and going to a previously terraformed planet that went bad... totally from Serenity.
I haven't read Aurora Rising so I can't really compare, but Finn being described as "tech whiz" and "smart-ass" in the pic at 6:12 makes me immediately think of Kerr Avon from Blake's 7. There even seems to be some similarity in looks and demeanor. Great show, by the way, one probably needs a bit of tolerance for old (British) TV to watch it, but it has good stories, fantastic characterization and nice aesthetics. One of my all-time favourites, actually.
Just the image with the black eyes reminds me of Dr. Emil Lang from the Macross/ Robotech universe. I’d have to go back to novels to check if the personalities are similar
1). “Borrows everything and calls it their own” is why I hated Eragon and never read the rest of the series. 2). You hate copypasta so much, I think you’re upsetti-spaghetti. ;)
If you like sci-fi, don't tell me you haven't yet read Stanislaw Lem, one of the best classic sci-fi writers. You must have heard of "Solaris", but there's also the fantastic "Invincible" that's being adapted into a video game later this year (not to be confused with the cartoon by the same title). I wish you could read at least one of them and make a review or at least share your thoughts!
I didnt know you were allowed to publish your crossover fanfics! And this one is not even good! Why pay money for an actual book if you can read better stuff on AO3?
Oof, the whole plant planet, everything infected and “conscious” is strait from the ender’s game series (speaker for the dead). Only those books have a great debate about what life is and how people categorize hostil vs peaceful life forms and how those categories determine the moral consequences of genocide (xenocide). If a life form, by its nature, infects and destroys other life forms, is it ok to destroy it? Or is that still destroying life and therefore morally wrong? Good series if you’re into the more philosophical side of scifi.
i got precisely 77 pages into this book and gave up. i actually could not bear it
Ok… I know this is incredibly minuscule, but in Sci-Fi with alien races, I tend to think the names should be a bit more…. not normal? Kat? Tyler? Really?
I'm so happy to see someone i follow gave this book 1 star too! Cannot wait to get into this video
edit
Yes to so much of this! I don't think a book/show absolutely has to be unique but if its going to be a mishmash of things that have already been done, you have to make it endearing with fun characters. Aurora Rising is just so cringe to read. It felt so hollow, like someone wrote is just to make money from fans of other properties. I honestly felt like the authors didn't even like GOTG or Firefly, they just knew other people did.
You didn't mention it, and I've never seen other people mention it but I can't be the only one who thinks that several unrelated people/places being called Aurora was weird? The MC is Aurora but so is the Academy/starfleet and the area of space their in. Nobody even questions it, or thinks its a funny coincidence in book.
>_> I liked Titan AE, but I also can see how this was also kinda ripping off of Treasure Planet as while it's not on the hand, it still projected a map from a gem like globe.
Honestly, I'm starting to think that maybe some Sci-fi people need to start reading from the old school again because I'm starting to realize a lot of people don't seem to think of taking some older concepts and expand upon them in ways. For example: Anne McCaffery's Crystal Singers had a whole system of the Federation where you are litrally using crystals to power *everything* and if you lost your crystal, your soceity died out. But where you get your Crystals? From an very dangerous planet where the plantet is trying to murder you through sonic waves that turn you into a vegable, and the people who harvest those crystals are doing a thankless job of risking their lives and their memories to get those crystals.... And they have a musical understanding of sound in order to find the right crystals to send out.
Like dude, There's a lot of examples from old Sci-Fi that can expand through modern takes, I get that Startrek and Starwars inspired a lot of what we know today. The whole finding girl in cryostatis is a long time trope that was seen in the anime scene like Outlaw Star, and the fold space theory is based on the Wormhole theory in actual science (More scifi actually uses the Wormhole because that can be brought up through actual sciencetific theories as the fold-theory is too simplistic for most writers now... as it was actually apparently based on a sci-fi trope written in the 17th-century when I looked up who did the first example of it.), but there's a lot more to play with than just bouncing off of modern media that is used a lot. (and while I like a good ragtag team trope, but this sounded so disjointed because the people just did not have much of a chemistry from what I understand through the discription you gave.)
Yeah, I totally get what you’re saying about treasure planet and Titan AE. I haven’t really thought about it because I grew up watching Titan AE like repeatedly, but I didn’t watch treasure planet until I was in high school and it wasn’t a staple in the way Titan AE was. But yeah the comparisons are valid!
4:00 didn't see the whole video yet so I don't know if you said the reference after lol but the whole "girl who's been in cryo sleep for a fvckton of time, gets picked up in space then joins a ragtag team of soldiers and is pursued by alien entities" ... It's Aliens. Ellen Ripley and the whole Marines crew on the colony. Only thing missing is Jonesy the cat.
Originality truly doesn't course through Jay Kristoff's veins huh
the crew makeup reminds me of mass effect andromeda too. this book is so unoriginal lol
Jay Kristoff is a walking fedora.
Also that scene in Silver Linings Playbook was me after reading The Cursed Child.
hm. I think I know Octavia-3 by another name... what was it?.... of right MIRANDA!
I wonder if I will ever feel SERENITY again. I'll just let it drift away like a RIVER. or maybe let soar like a LEAF ON THE WIND.
Can you make a video about adult books that you like? I've found 3 recs from you and liked them all. I trust your recs and am excited for more!
Yes absolutely!
I was at a local bookstore recently and saw a fantasy book that caught my eye. The author's name was so familiar, but I couldn't quite place where I'd heard it...
Until I remembered: It was from this video. The author was Jay Kristoff. So yeah, this review saved me from what probably would have been a mediocre book!
Mating bonds and soulmates squick me out. Cant really explain it but it's at least a quarter related to a lack of consent? Like "the world says we should be together. No matter what you think" which is.... a choice. Also most of the books I've read with mating bonds has the guy act like an overprotective ass.
The Buzz Lightyear got me good LMAO
Your description of the characters sounded so familiar but I didn't remember the book so I went back to my Goodreads to see what I had noted and it turns out.... I dnf'd it. 😂😂
i love how in practically every review i've read everyone agrees that fin was the only semi redeemable part of this book, his back must really be hurting from carrying the entire thing
also, not only is the concept of the mind control plant a rip off of the last of us but to me it seems extremely reminiscent of the Othermind from the wings of fire book series, right down to the plant association
And Joss Whedon in turned ripped off most of Firefly/Serenity (that isn't confused Confederacy apologia) from the anime Outlaw Star.
Another great video!
Outlaw Star
Oh, I've never heard of Outlaw Star i will have to look it up.
Wait ACTUALLY?
Why would you ever pass up the hilarity of having your out of time character frequently using curse words that are incredibly archaic to the rest of the crew. You could literally make up anything and never explain yourself.
Hey hey, celebrating my wedding anniversary with wake and bake with Rachel!
The problem I have with books like this is not so much the pinching of ideas, but the not doing something new with them. There are plenty of excellent retellings of Shakespeare (10 things I hate about you immediately comes to mind) and Shakespeare was retelling older stories a lot of the time. Wide Sargasso Sea takes Jane Eyres plot and decides to explore how the mad wife came to be in the attic. Anthony Horrowitz has written an excellent Sherlock Holmes book. Even when explicitly confining themselves to a world and characters and plot created by someone else, these works manage to bring something new, to expand the world they reference rather than simply imitate.
I've consumed plenty of stories where protag goes to some sort of seedy underbelly area to claim a mcguffin from a creepy weirdo but the thing was all of those seedy underbellies and creepy weirdos had been deliberately crafted and claimed as the authors own. 'There are many creepy weirdo characters but this one is mine' kinda vibe. It's not only possible but necessary for any good author to be able to do this.
In the end most stories could be broken down to a series of scenes that can be found in other stories. But a good story will not actively invite you do so.
BTW, have you heard the discourse about the top goodreads review of Kafkas Metamorphosis? Tumblr is very not happy about it and rightly so!
Not that this is a GOOD thing, but the reason this stuff gets popular is partly because it's something that people know and have seen before making it comfortable. "The mere exposure effect describes our tendency to develop preferences for things simply because we are familiar with them. For this reason, it is also known as the familiarity principle."
A… a redhead named Scarlett in a sci fi story? Where have I seen that before?
Edit: I forgot the second “t” in the name Scarlett. How embarrassing.
I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT THE SAME THING 😂
honestly, as someone who never read scifi before this one, this book was fun and enjoyable, as I had nothing to compare it to. I still kinda like it, although I have yet to read the last one, as it´s hard to get in my country
So it's the Flood from Halo, I guessed that before you. When you mentioned Ancient Ones sealing the plant zombies away, I was instantly like: yeah that's the Flood (but plants) and Forerunners
Tbf one of my favourite sci-fi factions is the Flood but nanomachines son.
Ahhh YES! I saw Titan AE in theaters. I love that movie.
ahh another from the ''Deep Space Nine to Queer Person' pipeline. I also hated this book
I remember Finn being the only part of the book I liked too. I just thought it was all so boring and predictable. There were too many POV characters for this type of story and it just…didn’t add to the actual plot to have all those perspectives.
Can someone help me did I miss the part where they explained how anyone knew that Aurora was awake and out walking around and what she looked like, because she's been in cyo sleep for 200 years.
sounds like a meta-crossover fanfic lol pass
Didn't anyone else also get Vulcan vibes from Kal? The whole 'not showing your emotions' space elf thing (and at some point he also does basically the Vulcan pinch, but that might have been in the second book), besides Kal and Tyler felt like Spock and Kirk but in a YA version. Especially if you think Chris Pine's Kirk.
My daddy is a Star Wars guy and got me into sci fi as a kid. I was also jus _not_ into this one👀 I felt like I should have been, but it just wasn’t hitting.
Title alone, “Aurora Rising” …. “Red Rising” by Pierce Brown 🤔🤔🤔 kskskskskksksks
What in the mash of better science fiction stories...Honestly, I want to tackle this lore in a short story, minus the rip offs.
I just bought the entire series from my Library for a quarter a piece 😂 Honestly, sci-fi isn't for me because it gets to be too hard to follow in my brain. But if it's just a rip off of a bunch of famous sci-fi media, I might actually be able to follow it. 😂
ALSO. I ADORE Titan A.E.
Jay Tropehappy and Amy what's-her-face are the type of writers who scrub the serial numbers of a fanfic to turn it into an original story. This is their multiverse fanfic that they thought sounded cool.
i heard "taylor is an alpha" and my fanfiction reading ass instantly went 👀👀👀
Alpha males the second someone brings up omegas:
re silver linings playbook, I did that with Jodie Piccult's book about the sisters with the kidney transplant.
Threw it at the wall, but it sailed right out the open window. I was in a holiday let and it was their book. It sailed right to his feet as he was coming up the path, he chapped the door and handed it to me saying, "I think you dropped this."
I never had a such a beamer in my life.
I hated the ending of that book so much
@@Financiallyfreeauthor i hated the start and middle as well.
But it sure does fly.
@@astrothsknot I think my taste is pretty unsophiticated lol. I was enjoying it fine, was interested, invested, and then all of a sudden it dove off a cliff
I've been rewatching DS9 from the beginning and I'd forgotten how good it is.
SO. GOOD.
This book also feels to have a hint of The Wayfarer Series by Becky Chambers, which I highly recommend. Like the ragtag team vibes, but also the some of the roles of the team are near similar, down to the diplomat-like role. I don't think it's enough to call it plagiarism, but the hints are still there.
I have to admit that I ate this entire trilogy up and would probably give it an average of 4 stars if I remeber correctly. But this might be because I basically only ever read YA books when I want something light and easy to read and to escape from reality for a while at times when I have to deal with a lot of stuff in my life so I don't really have high standards here. So, I definitly see the criticism and tbh after learning more about Jay Kristoff I decided against reading more of his books. I don't regret reading this series but I think I don't need any more 😅
I also think it's funny how much the characters reminded me personally (a huge Avatar: The last Airbender fangirl) of ATLA characters.
I mean come on, they're all there:
The east-asian kid with glowy eyes and special powers who's the last surviver of a huge catastrophy and carries everyone's fate on their shoulders after taking a century long nap..
The disabled character who has extraordinary abilities and a snarky personality to protect their soft core.. (sorry, Finian is also a rip off 😂)..
The brother sister pair who discover and assist said special kid with glowy eyes to safe everyone and who's father is a war hero while their mom is long dead..
The other brother sister pair who's daddy is a lunatic warlord, who are therefore part of a nation hated for partaking in warcrimes and shunned by other nations. The brother being an angry, angsty but very hot outcast who wants to be loved by his dad but also decided to oppose him. The sister being a wicked, cruel daddys girl and taking part in his war etc.
Maybe there's more, but I can't remember XD
The space elf was a Romulan.
Wait- am I crazy or is this also giving Dead Space rip-off vibes? Here me out, the marker may not have been a plant, but it sure is comparable to the "mind control" plant in the book. I promise you I'm not trying to pull this out of a damn hat lol.
OMG as soon as you started with the diamond and the palm, I nearly dropped my drink and was like... No... NOOOOO!! And sure enough you go on and continue to talk about Titan A.E-- but I also thought of Treasure Planet a little bit after though and both of these are some of my favorite animated sci-fi movies :D
Oh boy, if you think Aurora Rising is full of stolen ideas from other media, wait till you read his Empire of the Vampire. It blatantly steals from popular books, movies, and even video games 💀
When you said Captain Hotness... I looked away like I'm on the Office except I looked at my wall and tried not to roll my eyes to hard. Lol this book. Thanks, no thanks.
O! I was curious of this one, now I just think, Rachel read it so I dont have to!
I'm feeling the same way
Danm, i just picked this book up for my birthday and was excited to read it. What a slap in the face 🗿
So apart from Jay Kristoff does anyone know anything about the other author Amie Kaufman? I was planning on checking out a book that she solo wrote but if she is as equally awful as Jay and just steals ideas then maybe I will give it a pass.
If you like sci-fi, I can't recommend The First Sister trilogy enough. It's fantastic and queer af
I wish alechia dow was more popular. I enjoyed her books from what I've read so far
I never finished this book. I read the first 5-ish chapters three or so years ago and after hearing Aurora call the main dude "Captain Hotness" for the third time I dropped it. It just made me cringe too much.
Last love scene with Aurora and her boyfriend was copy word by word from "These Broken Stars" Kaufman.
But i suppose its not plagiarism if you copy your previous book.
I read this and i loved it so much when it came out but I'm still really interested in what you have to say.
Cat looks so lesbian coded and the fact that they made her straight is a crime
i so totally thought she was queer and that she and scarlett would get together when they had the whole exchange about like making out or something??? absolutely heartbreaking ngl