"Dragons roasting people" makes me want to read a book where dragons are mean comedians...

"NOBODY in this Dragon Academy could figure it out that the little widdle cute little dragon is a baby dragon" UHAUAHUAHUAHAUHAUAHUA I LOVE THIS

I guess my new hyperfixation is watching YouTubers criticize this specific book that I have never and will never read, and your giggles about it are making it even more entertaining

I agree with ALL of this, especially the pointlessness of the cut-throat kill-or-be-killed violence at the college. Violet both tells us constantly that she believes someone will kill her at any moment AND fails to act like a person afraid for her life. Her reaction to her own potential death & the actual deaths of ppl she knows is sort of blunted, like she says "oh my god how horrible" but then you never hear about that person or how her horror affects her psychologically again.

My theory is that a lot of those booktokers have just discovered reading and so they're just enjoying and recommending anything that they get their hands on (esp when publishers are sending them the books). Which isn't necessarily bad, I did the same thing as a teen (pre-tiktok etc era), but the nature of social media makes it so that it's just messing with trad pub and the market at this point

The whole ‘smart girl is actually dumb’ thing is so frustrating. Listening to you talk about it was reminding me of Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood, how the FMC (Bee?) insists throughout the book that the MMC hates her, even when he repeatedly tells her point blank to her face that she’s wrong. Even after they’re sleeping together… 🏼‍️

Not to mention that it was completely illogical for violet to feel so betrayed and furious with Xaden for not telling her a crazy big secret that could get everyone he cares about killed when they weren’t even officially together until 5 seconds before War Games when the bombshell drops… like WHEN was he supposed to tell you before?! And WHY should he have felt obligated to tell you before you guys were even together?

30:21

Reading about the dragons having sex and learning that they can't be apart for more than 3 days despite the region being under constant attack was my final straw.

My favorite thing is that she happens to be up a tree at an opportune moment TWICE

It seems like a lot of these books have this fan fiction effect where there's not a lot of actual exploration of anything. It's just pulling from a bunch of other stories and using these items as set pieces for the fun of it, expecting readers to fill in the blanks. Don't get me wrong, fan fiction has its place, but I fear that this style is influencing traditional publishing standards in a way that I don't love. I think the line between fan fiction and traditional publishing should not be blurred because then people don't know what they're picking up and then we get disappointed and the trust between publishers and readers goes down.

speaking of what you mentioned at 30:23; it was absolutely BAFFLING to me that there was all of this fuss about dragons choosing the right riders and such, but then there being cadets who literally fell to their deaths after making it that far, simply because they couldn’t stay on some big smooth scaled backs! like wtf?? why was violet’s the only one that liked her enough to help her?

Yes to literally all of this! The refusal to give up the “when is he going to kill me” thing drove me INSANE. I found violet to be a very unlikeable character. The snarkiness in every interaction with xaden was borderline unbearable. I found the initial world building really confusing at times. It was just so much information without much connection between it all

i dont know how much more "at least people are reading more!" i have in me to justify books like these becoming super popular SNDGFJSDJSDKJGHSDKJGHKJ

If there's ever a book and it involves the phrase “it was getting a lot of hype on TikTok” then expect the worst.