Okay, so today we are going to be doing another batch review. We're going to be talking about
three books. One is a short story, The Apple Tree, which is a Daphne Du Maurier ghost story uh then
we have The Push which is a non-fiction and last will be Red Rising. There will be time stamps in
the description if you want to jump around a little bit. Okay, so we're starting with The
Apple Tree which i'll keep pretty brief because it's like 125 pages long and it's illustrated. So,
it's even less. Uh... even fewer? Korey corrects me every time. Anyway, The Apple Tree is a
psychological ghost story. It's hard, it's hard to describe because i guess it would be called like a
psychological suspense, psychological horror. But classic horror and suspense and thrillers
look really different from modern books in those genres so it's... i don't want to set up wrong
expectations, so it's a it's a ghost story. It's called a Christmas ghost story because i'm pretty
sure it's called a ghost story because of the old tradition of reading ghost stories on Christmas
Eve together. I think it was Christmas Eve. And this was one of those that was wrapped up in that
tradition. Not because it's set at Christmas time necessarily. So don't expect a Christmas story,
but it was great. I really enjoyed it a lot, naturally. Du Maurier is a master. So this is
a more of a psychological story. It's about a man who has a wife who he does not like. I mean,
he doesn't dislike her. She's she's she's a bit difficult and then she dies. And then there's
this apple tree that basically starts haunting him. He starts... i mean, that probably creates
quite the image in your head. This apple tree he starts kind of relating to his wife
and the apple tree that has always been fruitless dying; it starts flourishing, but it produces
fruits that everybody else finds delicious where he, they make him sick and he finds them putrid.
And um everybody seems to have a different idea about what this apple tree is than he does and a
different experience and it kind of drives him mad. And uh, it's it's Du Maurier's signature
style of creating these um philosophical questions and discussions as well as these characters that
you love to hate and incredibly readable writing style. It's very very short. Probably of the
three Du Maurier's that i've read now, probably my least favorite, but that's not an insult to it. I
still really really enjoyed it. It's short, so there's not a ton to talk about in it,
but if you just want a really fun ghost story sort of ghost story... if you just want a really fun,
light haunting it it delivers that. It's great. I loved it. Next i'm going to talk about The Push
which is a non-fiction. So i watched the documentary The Dawn Wall and it's this
rock climbing documentary about this guy who has had quite the life and at one point in his life
he decides to climb The Dawn Wall, which is El Capitan, which is an iconic climbing um mountain
and The Dawn Wall is a pitch that very few climbers... actually i think only he and one
other have ever climbed it, but the dawn wall was an unclimbable pitch. Nobody thought they
could do it. Nobody thought anyone could do it because it's just it's just a slate of of very...
few hand holds and footholds um just pure smooth rock is what i'm trying to say. Anyway... um he
and a buddy decide that they're gonna climb it to put it really simply and it's it's an impossible
climb. It took him three weeks. It was a great documentary. I loved it. I bought his book.
And his book is his life story as well as The Dawn Wall climb and it was fantastic. I think if i had,
if i had read the book first i probably would have thought, "Oh my goodness, man. Move on!" because
he just, he talks about every single detail of certain parts of his life and uh really really
digs into it and if i had read the book first i wouldn't have appreciated that. I would have
been like, this is so insignificant. Move. And i would have wanted to get to the climb which
is at the very end of the book. It's, it's... i listened to the audiobook. It's the last i think
five or six hours of this audiobook. I think the audiobook is 13 hours total so
it would have seemed too wordy to me, but um because i watched the doc first
it was everything that i had already seen, but it was digging deeper into all of it and getting
more about Tommy's life and um... (who this whole thing is about) learning more about his life and
more details about his struggles and these things that i'm already invested in, these people that
i'm already invested in. Getting to just dig that much deeper was awesome. I loved it so much. I
think if you aren't a climber, if you don't know, i grew up climbing. My dad was a
big rock climber and he would he would travel to climb mountains he would ice climb like, he was
a beast and then when he had my brother and i he taught us to climb too and i really latched
on to it so my dad and i would go on climbing trips. All growing up we would we would camp
out and just climb for a weekend and i loved it. And it was a huge part of my growing up and i
love rock climbing so much. So this is something that i'm very invested in. I would say that if
you don't care about rock climbing very much i don't know that you would like the book. Watch
the documentary. It's incredible. But there's so much climbing lingo and Tommy doesn't take
the time to explain the lingo very much. He mostly assumes that you know what he's talking about so
i don't know that it would be interesting if this isn't something that you're interested in, but for
me i loved reading this book. And because i know there are going to be a lot of comments on this,
yes. I've also watched the documentary on free solo um called Free Solo and i really enjoyed that
one too, but The Dawn Wall; Tommy's story, i loved being able to experience it twice in two different
ways. The last book that i'm going to be talking about in this video is Red Rising which is a very
popular series or the first book in a very popular series and i didn't like it. I mean, just being
honest... i didn't like it. I'm still continuing on with this series because i have been told, i've
been beaten over the head with the concept that this series gets better. The book one, so many
people say book one isn't very strong and then it gets, i mean some people still love book one, but
a lot of people say book one isn't very strong and book two is a massive step up. Obviously Daniel,
if you watch his channel too (which you probably do if you watch me) um he just read book two and
he has been hyping book two for me. So i will be reading book two very soon. I'm just gonna move uh
right on into it probably in January, but we're talking about book one so let's talk about it.
Okay, book one took the concept of um the hunger games, or i guess the correct... battle royale. He
took this concept and made it his own i assume. I haven't watched interviews with him. I don't
know his life, but it seems like it. There's so many parallels. It's it's his take on a story
that we have read and seen in a million different ways. He did he did a good job of making it his
own. This is about Darrow who is a part of this society, this world that's on Mars and um it's...
it's a society where the higher-ups, there's there's a huge class system that is all made
up of colors. The golds are at the top, the reds are at the bottom. Darrow is a red and
due to a set of circumstances he's now um i think it's fine to say this. It's a slow start,
but i'm pretty sure this stuff is in the back description too. Oh, how... okay. Due to a set of
circumstances Darrow is now in the hunger games. Um they're called the war games. Darrow is now in
the war games um where he is fighting his way to the top to help the reds get into a good position
to change the social statuses. Is that fine? I feel like that's a good description to keeping
think he did a good job of making it his own and his concept was really good. Most of my problems
really fall in the execution honestly. I like the ideas that he did and i like his take on it,
but the execution didn't work for me at all. First of all it's written in first person present tense
which is kind of hard for me to get used to, but i did get used to it as we went on. The problem is
that i think i think probably the strongest thing about this book is the world that Pierce Brown
monologue of Darrow like, and i... it actually, it's not because it's first person present. It's
the choice Pierce Brown made. He could have found more engaging ways to tell us about this world,
show us the world instead of telling us about it, but everything is delivered to us through
this long series of monologues in Darrow's head and i just wanted to experience things man! Like
i didn't need you to tell me for the 14th time how much you loved this woman in order for us
to get attached to her. Give me scenes of you guys interacting, not just the one. But like the amount
of time that's spent in these internal monologues to help us to see the world, i would have liked
to actually see the world. i'm told this gets better in later books, but this was something,
the strongest part of the book was something that i didn't like the way it was delivered
and then on top of that once we get into the war games um we're put in this bubble and we're taken
good job at it. It's it's these um these sections of people that team up and they kind of build this
society of their own. This this this um fortress of their own and then they're trying to tear down
each other's kingdoms, each other's fortresses within these games and and the the societal
conflicts that happen, i mean they're all golds, but the societal um things that are
presented throughout this book are interesting. He did a good job of making it his own, but
not only did the writing style not work out for me because so much is just delivered through Darrow's
very dry internal monologues, but this is a book where Pierce Brown does twist after twist after
twist after twist after twist and the problem is that because this concept is done to death
i could see most of these things coming. So having a predictable book isn't necessarily
terrible. He did do a good job of making it his own but also there's so many like shocking like,
"And then this!" and it's just like, okay. Yeah, but i know. You know what i mean? So
because it's supposed to be a bunch of twists but instead it's like, yeah. I mean, i predicted this
literally from the point we got to the setting. I knew where we were going. Do you know what i
mean? Which kind of took a lot of the excitement away from me. I don't i don't want to just whine
throughout this whole review because other than the fact that he did a great job of taking this
concept that's been done to death and making it his own and creating this really cool world
um he also had like a very snappy pacing where um i can understand why people would read this
and and just say wow that was a really really fun ride because he did a great job of keeping
it going, keeping it moving and making it um a ride. The thing that tipped me over from "Yeah,
this is this is fine. I'm i'm happy to read this." From from kind of middle of the road feeling about
this book into "I don't like this book." The thing that tipped me over is his constant use of
sexual assault to differentiate the good guys from the bad guys. I mean, it was so repetitive and oh
okay. Let me, let me explain. So anytime, this is a brutal world. This is a very dark, brutal world
with a lot of brutal, dark people. The problem is every time, not every time, near every time
Pierce Brown wanted to let us know this one's bad. We don't like that one. He used violence against
women to do it and it was just so, it was so constant. Every, nearly every bad guy as soon as
we're supposed to know, "oh they're bad" he used sexual assault to do it and and you know, it's a
dark, it's a dark brutal world and sometimes he did it in a way that's like "oh i get what
you're doing here. You're making a parallel. This person has fallen into the cycle of the darkness
of this world and they're repeating the cycle, whereas you know Darrow's supposed to be the
parallel of that. I see what he's trying to do." but sometimes it was so ridiculously unnecessary,
the purpose was just, "I want to establish that this guy's bad. How should i do it? Same way
i think three separate times and all three times i really didn't like the way he did it. It was just,
it was just lazy. In my opinion it was lazy. It was a lazy way to establish the people we're
supposed to be rooting for from the people that were not. To just use the same thing over and over
and over again to establish these differences or to progress the story. After a while it was lazy.
I know i'm gonna get hate for that but i honestly just don't care because i did not
like the constant use of it and i didn't like the way he handled the aftermath in any of the times
he tried to handle the aftermath. I don't think he did a good job with it. So i would kind of be like
middle of the road, hey it was still fun. He did a good job taking something and making it
his own. All right. Sure. I'll move forward. That's how i would feel, but then this thing
made me tip over to "nah. I just don't like this." This sort of thing doesn't bother everybody
on the level that it bothers me. That's fine. Live your life. It bothered me, i'm talking
about it. I am still gonna continue on with the sequels because so many people have told me
that uh this is still a theme in his in his books, but he handles it much much better and pretty much
most of my complaints about book one he improves leaps and bounds as the series continues and i'm
all for authors you know, growing and improving so i i'm all for seeing that growth from him.
So i will continue the series especially because so many people say that book one is
is drastically the weakest and it gets better. If this thing doesn't get better i probably won't
move on past book two, but so many people have told me that it does that i want to experience
is such a cool world and i want to see what he does with it, but yeah. Book one didn't work for
me. So there you go. You now have my thoughts on all three of these books. I will have all three
of them linked in the description and i'd love to continue chatting with... and i'd love to continue
chatting with you about them in the comments. I post videos every Tuesday through Saturday. Nope,
i post videos every Tuesday through Friday. I'll see you guys again soon.