WHY SO MANY BOOKS FEEL THE SAME 🤔 

The repetition in the rhythm of titles drives me nuts. A Song of Ice and Fire, A Court of Cliches and Tropes

I think one reason books are getting really trope heavy (besides laziness) is that authors have started viewing their books like internet media. They want their book to appear in as many search results as possible, and algorithms are increasingly presenting tropes. "Because you liked enemies to lovers, here are 100 other enemies to lovers books". So authors are doing the equivalent of keyword stuffing: trope stuffing. Put every trope you can think of into the book so you can list them as keywords. Algorithms don't recognize original concepts. We may soon have to look at the last page of search results for the original books.

Gotta agree on the language. Nothing breaks immersion like characters saying something "for the win" or that someone is "hot as f$%#"

Yeah we have a quantity over quality problem right now.

The modern language drives me crazy in particular when everyone talks like a 14-year-old that just discovered swear words. That was part of what threw me off about Fourth Wing, was even the old generals spoke like modern teenagers.

Your point of characters only finding each other hot instead of actually loving each other makes me think more authors should have seen the The Swan Princess movie as a kid.

Im really tired of how all the protagonists became queen in the end even though they said at beginning they hate royals and nobles but as soon they "fall in love with a prince" they change themselves. Also that trope: oh-I-was-a-lost-princess .

Honestly the height thing 🤣 all these men are like 6’5” and “massive” 😂😂😂

The “stupid, snarky protagonist” only works for me if they actually have some consequences for being stupid and snarky, like they get fired because they rudely refuse help from a more experienced person (setting themselves up to both fail their task and burn their bridges at that workplace at the same time). It’s the stupid, snarky protagonists who somehow are always proven right and somehow always succeed that pop up all over the place though, and they drive me nuts.

"I can't handle the characters that have a chip on their shoulder and are also really stupid" -- YES YES YES.

"Moronically snarky MC " 😂yes! I cannot stand this type of main character, it completely ruins a book for me. It also feels like there are only two typed of girls/women that exist in fantasy romances: either a snarky badass or a quirky wallflower (who also suddenly tends to become snarky when she meets the love interest). It's so frustrating! I agree with all other points as well, especially the All Lust, No Love and constant descriptions of how hot the characters are. Our society is already so hyperfocused on appearance that seeing the same thing in books is just annoying. I don't want to read about square jaws and chiseled abs, I want to read about emotional and intellectual connections the characters develop.

The super snarky and aggressive girl is a very cheap shortcut to write "strong female characters", imo.

Shrek has the best fantasy romances - there, I've said it 😄😄

I just want characters to be competent adults. Why is that such a high bar?

Enemies to Lovers has variants. My least fave is when they are supposed to be on the same side and enemies over some trivial interpersonal misunderstanding. My fave fave favorite is when they are both honorable mature people but their nations are at war, or he killed her father, or only one of them can win the elixir of eternal life to save their sick mom/dog whatever… then you don’t need Snark and Miscommunication to keep them apart. They are driven apart by real differences.

I hate when the fantasy book I was so excited to read turns out to be fantasy romance with lots of these tropes. Happened to me few times this year already :/ can't wait t o see what the 'fantasy books with miniscule romance plot' is

A good way I spot these same old romantasy novels is by checking the book covers. The book covers also seem to follow a certain trend.

This is the same in the movie industry. Nothing but remakes of the same old thing for the most part.

This is why I love the Emily Wilde’s books. She is not helpless, she is an academic, her love interest is annoying but he LIKES her actually like her as a person… the plot is smart and the fey aren’t evil “just because”

What drives me away from YA Fantasy at the moment is the fact that nearly every synopsis sounds like this: random girl in a very interesting fantasy world goes on an even more interesting quest to save x from y - but of course she can not do this on her own or with the help of her friends and family, no! To do that she needs to team up with this mysterious guy who she should hate but who is also insanely hot which is why they fall in love so screw the plot and throw the world building out the window!

Just say "Fourth Wing"

OMG, the "male" "female" thing has bothered me FOR YEARS. It started in romance and has migrated as romance authors have moved more towards fantasy. It's SOOOOOOOO cringe.

I almost feel as though I’ve committed some kind of unspoken writerly taboo by writing a werewolf book that isn’t a romance.

Enemies to lovers (or friends!) is such a trip for me. Either the author writes it too soft so the main characters aren't really enemies--more like mildly inconvenienced with one another upon first meeting--or they go in HARD and it feels too mean and personal to come back from 😅

I think the reason I wasn’t impressed with ACOTAR is because it’s basically a wattpad story and I read too many of those as a teenager 😂

11:00 I think doormat love interests are actually a large waste of opportunity for some deep characterization. People don't become doormats for no reason--they just learn early in life that there is no point in asserting themselves, so they just learn to let people walk all over them. Though not fantasy, one manga that explores the doormat psyche fantastically is Goodnight Punpun.

It’s giving “A [place] of [noun] and [other noun/verb]” 😂

Readers have been commodified. Publishers are chasing revenue instead of investing in developing and promoting talented writers.

Enemies to lovers is a Pride and Prejudice remake (and often written poorly). Characters immediately falling in love solely because they are hot is Romeo and Juliet (and still just as cringe).

I don't wanna sound mean, but most of the writers that get massively popular online aren't actually writing for the sake of the story. They are writing for the potential money, and use social media as a way to stitch a story together. They don't treat their characters as people with agency, and they don't allow the story to naturally progress. I call these kinds of writers as "cosplay writers" because they have the veneer of being a writer, but there's ultimately nothing there. These books are easily marketable because they hit all the popular words and phrases online, not because there is any substance. And you can like these books all you want, but at the end of the day they are made of nothing.

I'm glad you bought up the Sarah J Maas thing, actually. (I read the "Throne of Glass" series on a recommendation...) Honestly, the Fae business went beyond hot, long-lived, pointy-eared "males" and "females" for me; precisely because Maas herself didn't seem to go beyond that. Fae in her books seemed to have no discernable culture at all. Their ways of speaking were the same; their ways of scheming were the same; their cruelty seemed as on par as anybody else's in that world, if a little more bitey. Maas's world struck me as fantasy ornamentation to dress a romance. And given that just about every main- or side-character got a perfectly fitted side-piece by the end, it was pretty boring to me, too.

YES, thank you, agree with everything you mentioned. I think one of the issue is that a lot of new writers are mainly inspired by contemporary fantasy romance, and it's extremely limiting. If you think of the greatest writers, they were inspired by History, poetry, the classics, mythology, and not just greek mythology. They were very educated people, and/or had experienced a lot of the world, and because of that were able to create rich and unique worlds, they also had more things to say, and could write deeper stories.

One book’s tropes get super popular and everyone tries to jump in the same bandwagon. Fantasy has chased this dragon for a loooong time too

Books are like any other media in the business world. Publishers find a trend and then overwhelm us with the same thing until the market collapses. At this point, I'd like to see a return to LOTR-style fantasy.

Fantasy books that annoy me the most is where a character doesn’t know that he has some inner magical powers until he does and then he’s the “key” or “chosen” or something along those lines. I also don’t like female characters that are written as “badass” but they’re really not, they’re just mean to everyone for no reason. Imagine if Aragorn was an a hole to everyone, would that make him badass? But for some reason, many writers think their female character can’t be strong if she’s nice. Or she can’t be strong if she doesn’t kick some man’s butt twice her size. Like they HAVE to establish that. To me it’s extremely immature writing and I’m honestly sick of it. I just want a good story.

Try being a professional editor. 😂 I get book after book that literally has the same names of the main characters, the same settings, and of course the same template, plot point by plot point. It feels like the majority of "authors" (and I use this term very loosely anymore) don't even try to be creative at all. In many cases, the art has been eliminated from fiction writing, especially in genres like romance and mystery, but in fantasy as well. But while I can vent about the writers, it's the readers that glom onto these carbon copies that really get in my craw. Why are so many people acting like something is brilliant and groundbreaking when it's legit a stolen plot from a much better written book of the past???

So many books feel the same because that's what the readers want. Readers only want to read what they've already read... just with some tweaks. As an indie author, I learned that the hard way.

Just discovered the Tairen Souls series and realized SJM took literal scenes, characters, etc... yet no one gets mad at her about it.

It's because they sell. Some readers just want ACOTAR in a different font.

so spot on idk what it is with everyone making their main character mean af 😭😭

When it comes to romance-and a good love story-I am a firm believer in "less is more." Attraction can be important (and in fact, UST can be a great tool in building/writing romantic relationships), but if you rely solely on physical attraction to sell your romance, the story feels more like a tale of lust rather than love. There's nothing wrong with that, and many people enjoy those stories too, but if a love story is what you're going after, then you'll have to do the work to sell it to your audience.

What about the love triangles? Can we please stop with the love triangles??

Y'know you're the first person who's done a breakdown like this that actually not just makes sense, but takes things from a logical standpoint without being patronizing or that same kind of "over snarky" that are being used too often in books these days. Thank you!

The tan/ethnically ambiguous thing is seriously disingenuous. Authors know the meaning of words and leaving them out (I hope) so trying to get the broad appeal by being vague in books then going for the social justice points by being explicit on social media is just so UGH

Fiction = overwritten short stories. Non-fiction = overwritten magazine articles.

I am running into this with my current read - What Lies Beyond the Veil - the LF Estrella was raised as an oppressed peasant in a very strict society and says things like "Dont be a dick", and "Im not going to spread my legs for any man" ... just things that she should not be saying/are overly vulgar for what we know about her character. Also, these are things her fated mate would not be charmed to hear her say because he comes from a very formal court. The way she emasculates him and he just "chuckles" drives me crazy. You cannot have a strong alpha character who is also a dope and allows his mate to snark him all day long with an amused expression. Estrella has zero skills, has had her life saved by him multiple times and still is such an "oppressed, I don't need a man, girl boss". It's something that lets me know the author has leaked a bit too much of her modern day thinking into the story and it just doesn't flow right. . . Right now Estrella is upset because Callum is insisting they share the same sleeping quarters (and not be separated) while they figure out there new circumstances (surrounded by strangers and stuck in a dark, creepy cave system) (she is also supposed to be horribly afraid of cave monsters, but put her around a group of strangers in a cave and I guess she is fine?) ... However, IMO - Estrella shouldn't want to be separated from Callum. He is safe, strong and based on the time period and dangers around her, SHE NEEDS HIM. Again, she has no skills lol other than picking berries. She isn't even very grateful or appreciative, always got an attitude. Give these fated males a woman worthy of them! BUT it does show you that it's easy to write a male character we all swoon over but very hard for female writers to tap into writing worthy women.

i am not surprised that fantasy romance has copycats. i mean the romance genre is built upon this concept, i think this is where a lot of clash comes from between fantasy readers and romance readers when figuring out the right balance. i just hate that i am not into all that epic dark fantasy romance/erotica trends. give me more light hearted fantasy romance that isn't just legends and latte.

If you keep buying crap, publishers will keep putting out crap.

A lot of this is on the publishers really. POC characters: To some extent context matters. In urban fantasy set in a modern real world city, a characters race and ethnicity means a lot about how they interact with the world. In a fantasy setting with no relation to the real world, that context falls away. You can't be Mexican or African or Scandinavian in a world where these places don't exist. I'm going to use From Blood and Ash as an example here because it is has a good contrast. Kieran is black, he is described as dark skinned with tightly curled dark hair cropped close to the skull. Delano is white, pale skin ice blonde. But they're both wolven (naturally born werewolves) and that has more bearing on their place in the world then their skin color.

I think that writers aren’t reading like they used to. Reading classics and studying characters can help diversify the genre .

I think Sarah j.maas stole the mate thing from Wattpad 😂

"When the love interest is basically just a yes man, thats not a good love interest." I'm looking at you, Xaden Riorson. He met this girl a year ago and she spent the entire time intentionally trying to piss him off or cross boundaries and he keeps saying how he would throw away the whole rebellion (comprised of all his living friends and family) for her. His life's goal. Everything hes fought for. For a girl he barely knows.

I agree with the modern language being a problem, and I think it’s because it messes with the immersion. We expect that, given that the characters are in an entirely separate world with different historical and cultural influences, the characters will not be speaking and thinking like a modern Earth-human, so it pulls us out of the moment.

Engaging with books has significantly elevated my perspective on investing. True wealth isn't built through mere savings; financial freedom stems from strategic investments. I've learned that accumulating wealth hinges on making prudent investment decisions|

Also in mystery/thriller is feels like every other book is an "And Then There Were None" retelling but done oh so poorly 😅

You basically called out everyone on booktok lmao.

as a fiction/fantasy enjoyer, i feel like so many books are: 1. unexplained string of m*rders that the protag/s have to investigate 2. Normal Girl(tm) has to survive in a royal court filled with secrets and deception (and will met a hot boy and fall in love) 3. school (bonus points if it's a boarding school) 4. A Deadly Game/Competition (often combined with #2 or #3)

I totally agree with you about the whole male/female thing. I hate when people use male/female as nouns when talking about people. It is incorrect and generally fairly inhumanizing. When talking about people, male/female are adjectives like a male singer or a female astronaut. But the male singer is a man and the female astronaut is a woman 😂

I agree with pretty much all of your points 🤪 I avoid romance-based fiction almost completely because it’s all so ridiculous and unbelievable…none of these books showcase how relationships actually work, lol.

The one thing not mentioned in this video which I would add is the “chosen one” trope - almost every book I’ve picked up recently has this main character who somehow gets thrown into the story, only to learn they’re actually the chosen one and every decision they (& every other character) made was fated from the start and that’s that. It just annoys me. Sometimes it can work for me, but most of the time it’s so frustrating because it just doesn’t feel like the main character has actually earned anything or done anything special because they were always fated to do whatever feat they do in the book. And it’s almost every fantasy book I pick up nowadays

Interview with the vampire is an example of great romance! There is no Fay (poor Louis), colloquial language (except French), moronically snarky main characters (Lestat is goofy, but also manipulative), enemies to lovers (it feels like everyone is each other's enemies); there is no sex ( in the books, but tv series is spicier), love is not main plot (loneliness is), i don't remember if in the books there was anything about height, i think it wasn't important; there isn't an omegaverse dynamic; the aren't massive men (Armand is 17 years old (+/- 500) and teenager in look, Louis is average, except Lestat - he is handsome, but his personality is more alluring); one true pairing still refers to each other "My love. Mon chéri'. Book was released in 1976 and it was phenomenon - > overall it is complicated relationship, but in the end... you have to see. Especially tv series. I read this book 15 years ago and I can truly say that this is fictional romance where everything fits incredibly well. Also check Good Omens, book and tv series and Witcher books only, please don't hurt your eyes with netflix abomination.

Good summary. I read a lot of romantasy and what booooooores me endlessly is that the male (sic!) love interest is always described as "the most beautiful man she has ever seen" is big (in every sense) ripped (but he barely needs to work out) rich (although the heroines are described as pseudo-independent they never seem to be able to support themselves much less a man) and have a lot of sexual experience yet never will look at other women again once the short curvy and rather average heroine arrives on the scene. Oh and the extreme good looks of the man may only ever be marred by battle scars... A love story against life's odds would be much more captivating in my opinion.

Honestly, everything you mentioned is why I’ve given up on most modern writers and I’ve gone back to reading more of the classics. The reason I believe so many of these tropes are overplayed is because many of this generation’s writers have neither a great understanding of the English language nor do they have the depth of character to really flesh out complex emotions and characters. Compare nearly any of today’s authors to any of the works by the Brontë sisters, Dickens, or the works of Jane Austen. And most of their works all came in their 20’s and early 30’s!

The publishers went from quality to quantity. They are approving every book possible to get the most money instead of putting out quality books

Unrelated but I LOVE your grays! It looks like glitter or tinsel in your hair. Gorgeous 🥰♥️

To me, if you read one S.J.M. you've read all of her books, and I don't like her books. Still salty for the Assassin fantasy let down during my Assassin's Creed phase.

4:20 modern dialogue: #1 offender: okay. OK didn't come into wide use until US GIs spread it during WWII. Its not just fantasy, you see it in historical fiction too. "Alright" is just as long. But I think we're stuck with, "My liege! Are you okay!?"

As a fantasy fan who likes a little bit of romance in addition, the romantacy genre is killing me. The ratio is just too skewed towards the romance conventions. All the more power to people who want that recipe, but I've been burned so many times picking up a book that looks like fantasy and finding out it doesn't care about the worldbuilding or adventure aspect and spends the whole time explaining that two people are super horny for each other. After the third or fourth time my slow ass finally learned and I just won't read anything described as romantacy anymore.

Sarah J Maas probably got the Males and Females thing from The Black Jewels series, which she apparently ripped a lot of stuff from. It’s a society with a lot of gender tensions so it makes sense in that context, I’ve never read ACOTAR but I’d have to read it to see if it makes sense there too

Man, for about 90 percent of this, I was like, yes, girl talk that talk. How can you say Sarah J Maas is kinda played out without directly calling her out. The other 10 is directly calling her out😂.

You've just described what it's like to read really bad writing basically. And apparently there's quite a lot of it around. These kind of romantasy is basically harlequins with a dash of magic. These tropes are old as...yeah, they're old 😂 And it seems that they will keep on resurfacing in different forms cause there's always audience of people who will read it. It's so formulaic it can be mass produced in no time so perfect for our current 'instant' market of booktok etc.

Yes! The large man, small female trope ... just as an FYI my next door neighbor had a very painful pregnancy because of a huge stature difference - her whole last trimester the baby was to large for her frame and she was bedridden and had to have injections along her rib cage 2x a week to relax the muscles so that her ribs didn't break. Her recovery was so hard and she had a lot of tearing and no FAE abilities to heal from that lol. So now I always read that trope with some Skepticals now. I guess a case of real life changing how you read characters - I stopped reading a werewolf book when it was revealed he was 6'7'' and she was barely over 5' ... like come on! The only thing I can compare it to is when Hoopz started dating Shaquille ONeil

Writing is meant to be creative. It is meant to have heart. It is meant to give us new things that we aren't expecting. Now it's just copy paste stories with different character names.😔 Dear creative writers, please do not continue the cycle.💙

A lot of authors are held to strict parameters. Publishers have to sell what they know will sell. Indie authors (myself included) are not held to these standards, but those can sometimes be a hit or miss (hopefully a hit). But I think a lot of movies have this problem also. Even when I was in highschool (2010), I was noticing all YA was the same. I asked one of the associates at Barnes and Noble if they had any recommendations that weren't all the same, but he said, "try a different genre." That's when I started branching out, and I think that's important to do. 😊

i just hate how every fantasy is also an erotic book all of a sudden. Cant see on the cover or anywhere on the book or genres on the tags that its even a romance, and then it turns out its all sex. Like come on im not interested

A lot of people are like this now. No thought is original. The more plugged into media genres, identities, and cultures the more the experience in life is controlled. What your eye sees is the experience. In times when people were independently experiencing the world while consuming less all encompassing mass media, the opportunity for individual experience could flourish. People could still pick up on what they read in the newspapers or heard in Church, but most of their lives were spent living and interacting directly with the world and having unique experiences. The best artists and writers were fiercely individualistic and questioned everything. They weren't running off a gender studies text book or looking at memes.

6:21 me everytime Shallan speaks in a conversation: "are you not able to utter ONE SENTENCE in which you don't try to impress someone with your supposed wit?" especially in the first like 2 books her conversations feel so forced

It’s because these books are targeting modern women 17-45 and they’ve figured out the formula. You’re getting played the same way us men got played with horror movies from the 70s-90s. They figured out guys like boobs (what a revelation) and served up the same formula, for the most part, for 30 years. The male gaze was retired somewhere around 2012 but it was dying before then. The female gaze is all over these books, it’s just more complicated than the male gaze. Only issue is that it won’t go away as easily because nothing in the female gaze will be deemed “problematic.” So it’ll take more effort to get them to break the formulaic stuff. It’ll require women to really prop up originality.

So much of this has parallels with the music industry.

As a women Can I just say that I miss feminine women. In my opinion it seems like women are only worthy of being the main character (both books and movies) is if they are strong female Characters; Acting Traditionally masculine. I just feel like it’s a slap in the face to us women who are Feminine. Why is feminine women not a thing anymore?

Also, the thing that drives me crazy about fantasy romance right now is that all of the covers look the same. Mine also looks the same, but this was because everyone told me that to compete in a genre, our covers have to look like all the rest of the books in the genre. It’s frustrating.

Yup, that's why I switched over to high fantasy and contemporary romance books now. I find that "romantasy" books have become formulaic. As if authors want to chase the fame SJM books amassed, by sticking to those same tropes/storylines.

That stuff you mentioned about the cute romance really intrigued me. I'm gonna need a name for that Book you were reading because I need good examples of natural romance.

I came up with a nice trilogy idea. If I were to extend the series I would write a book two or centered on a side character before they met the main character. Like the coming of age of the Ancient Mystagogue.

"...They're just hot people who live a long time and have pointy ears" 😂😂😂😂😂

I don't know if this is just me, but I really dislike that 99.99% of amnesia-trope books always end with the person get thier memories back at like the 85% mark. I'd love if I could read just one where they just don't, and they have to deal with it. It feels like such a cop-out when I know going in that whatever issue this gives the MC it doesn't really matter because it going to resolve in exactly the same way as every other book with this trope.

Romantasy tropes are often well-tread because they are nifty to ideas to play with, but they can lead to predictable routes and make them dull or, worse, irritating to read. Personally, I will devour anything that is similar to the Saint of Steel series, but I have not found much that hits the same: MCs in their 30s/40s, intelligent, with their own lives and motivations, in a well-built fantasy world with intriguing conflicts.

Currently writing a sci-fi ya romantasy and you don’t understand the SIGH OF RELIEF I breathed when none of these were applicable to my WIP!

….because all these books are fantasy mashups of high school teen love triangles written for the exact same audience without care for actual literary merit?

13:17 omg THANK YOU. The “male, female” things really irks me. It’s almost as irksome as the modern language in fantastical worlds issue imo. I will say, The Shepard King Duology (One Dark Window, Two Twisted Crowns) by Rachel Gillig did romantasy very well and, for the most part, the characters were very well motivated by their circumstances and internal guidance systems which made it so easy to relate to them. The world building was also there which you can’t say for lots of books of the same ilk (basically anything SJM writes 🙄). Also, the romance was precious and done in a balanced way as opposed to taking over the whole story. Haven’t found good romantasy since 😓

I'm writing a whole thesis on this concept. It goes deeper and off into many different directions but I love this video!

I think we don't like characters in fantasy talking like we do because why would they ? It's a different world with different features and references. It feels nonsensical that they would speak exactly the way we would.

I LOL-ed when you mentioned amnesia trope, 'Oh I used to love you so now I have my memories back so I guess I'm in love with you again.' I just read one book that has this trope and I'm still digesting the whole thing, wondering how I really feel about the book. Lol.

I’m sick of hearing people say “inspired by Sarah J.Maas”. Maas ripped off Anne Bishop. Maas is a bit more palatable and definitely more YA friendly, but she is most certainly NOT the mother of romantic fantasy.

The abusive love interest 😭 Why are we framing creepy behavior as hot??? I really want to jump on the hype train for lots of booktok famous books for the sake of the community BUT their "hot guys" are abusers and no amount of good looks will suspend reality enough for me to let that behavior pass ✋️

The reason why is because you have slew of literary agents who will give you a formula the publishers adhere to when accepting books. If you don't follow the formula, your book is rejected. If you don't have an agent, your book is thrown to the trash. So nothing innovative gets past the submission desk.

I wanna hug you right now!! Thank you SOOOO much for making this video!!! I'm an aspiring author of Fantasy novels and I'm super annoyed with every single point you are talking about! The annoyance is going so far that I'm turning to read other genres or only fantasy for MG entirely because there are just not really good books being published in the fantasy genre in YA or adult right now. What is frustrating me most is the toxic relationships happening in many YA and adult Fantasy at the moment which are considered being "romantic" by many readers and authors. What is going on there???!!! It's making me angry because authors have a responsibility to their readers, especially the young ones. Toxic relationships seem to become something that is wanted, which is worrying me a lot! Novels like this are encouraging young people, but especially girls thinking it's normal that the love interest/partner is being a stalker or jealous all the time (or worse) and it only shows how much he loves her/him. This way they are not learning what a healthy relationship looks and should be like!!! I REALLY hope that this trend is just a phase and will end soon!! Sending you good vibes and thanks again!

"GF [Genre Fantasy] is at heart not fantasy at all, but a comforting revisitation of cosy venues, creating an effect that is almost anti-fantasy. An allied point is that GFs cater in large part for unimaginative readers, who, through the reading of a GF, can feel themselves to be, as it were, vicariously imaginative." - John Grant

I feel this way about 95% of the fantasy I read. I’d say they read like they’re written like teens wrote them, but I’ve read fanfic by young people that’s far better written than these books.

One my pet peeves comes from Sarah J. Maas and it’s her naming practices. I really irks me that in fairly isolationist courts, no one really has any distinct names. Her world appears to be based at least somewhat on the British Isles, so she missed a great opportunity to have some unique names for the residents of each court that sets their individual cultures apart from one another. Instead, she chose to sort of half-ass it by making up a few names and then throwing in random things like Morrigan and Valkyries and Illyrians. Add to that the confusing time period aesthetic and sometimes archaic, sometimes painfully 21st century dialogue and it just gets to be a bit of a mess.