Zenith is Lightlark in Space! YA Book Review and Deep Dive 

I'm gonna be honest I have no idea how we got such a long episode out of this book. Anyways join our discord: discord.gg/7bDZJ27Wan

I genuinely appreciate that you two will come up with different reads and opinions of these books and propose different fixes that are fundamentally opposed to eachother's and just talk it out. It's probably that you are both writers and have a strong foundation to build from.

You're "sleepover story time" analogy is a perfect encapsulation of a bigger problem in YA/romantasy: a disquieting dissonance between the declared ages of the characters and the actual ages they read as. Snark is supposed to indicate cleverness, but reads like petulance; propensity for violence is supposed to demonstrated ruthlessness, but reads like the prolonged temper tantrum of a rampaging toddler; sexual attraction/romance that's supposed to be electrifying and fraught with will-they-won't-they tension reads like a grade 8 game of spin-the-bottle; complex plans and political manoeuvring that are supposed to stun readers with their sophistication are written, one letter per page, in crayon; character dynamics that are supposed to leave us believing in their deep friendships or rivalries only exist as proof that authors eating glue won't make things stick. "But, they're teenagers!", you say. To which I say: "Then they should be written as teens, not pre-teens." Or, if you want to write that (im)maturity level, don't send them romping around your galaxy-of-hats slaughtering people for sh*ts and giggles. Same goes for "new adult". More often than not, twenty-somethings read like sixteen or seventeen while boning so hard they're breaking furniture. What's more disturbing is that the average age of YA readers seems to FAR outstrip its intended audience. YA readers are mid-twenties and up these days. The Peter Pan Syndrome is real, and it's creepy; like "R. Kelly hanging out at the McDonald's next to the high school" creepy. It makes the hyper-immaturity of the characters even more unsettling, especially with the demand for "spice" on the rise. That the majority of authors and consumers of such are women ... well there's a lot to unpack. All I can say, in short, is that we deserve better. I'm sure the authors were having fun at some points, and that's fine. An 8 year old can have fun making a mud pie; doesn't mean I want a slice. The issue is that they slapped a price tag on it and took people's money. That's where the fun stops. That's when having expectations of quality aren't just fair, but fundamental. That the book was released as is, IS the fault of the publisher, full stop, but the stunning lack of self-awareness on display by the authors is obnoxious. I have zero sympathy for them, their ilk (Astor, Yarros, Maas, Armentrout, etc.) and the drubbing such books get. Genre fiction readers take the things they love seriously, quite possibly because Sci-fi/fantasy was treated as something entirely un-serious for so long, so when YA drags it back into vapid, denigrating, low-effort slop territory, I'd say the backlash is earned. The marketing-squee of BookTok doesn't help, either. At this point, I categorically refuse to read BookTok, sorry, **TropeTok** recs because the odds of getting more of the "Lightlark fan club" are just too high and life is too short.

Gotta say, this is definitely one of those episodes that made me want to _make_ something. I don't even have many thoughts on the actual contents of the book, I think there's just such a sense of unfettered creation and effort here that it's difficult not to get caught up in it all. And it helps that it made me feel better about not writing with the aim to get published. I'm fully aware that I'm making all of my larger projects for myself- I mean, I still hope they're not irredeemably bad (which I will staunchly and stubbornly refuse to believe even if I'm told so, mind), but I know that it's alright if they stay in my own hands, at least until they've taught me what they need to. All that to say, I guess I'm going to write some more weird things now.

I read this back in the day when it came out, and I agree with pretty much everything you said based on what I remember, except the point about it having “weird girl” energy. In my opinion, its fatal flaw was not being weird enough. The “Lightlark in space” comparison is incredibly apt because like that book, so much of the setting and worldbuilding begin and end with shallow aesthetics, things that would inspire Pinterest moodboards and not much else. And yeah that can be fun, but I’m a big science fiction fan and this book felt almost embarrassed to be sci-fi. Like, the spaceships and lasers felt like a Fortnite skin on top of a fairly standard YA romantasy. To take one of your examples, there’s this big crew of side characters and they all have a kind of weapon they’re good at and maybe a single alien feature, but no one is a mechanic, and none of them ever actually use their special abilities in a way that matters. I was reminded of all the side characters in the Court of Thorns and Roses series that the readers are told have all this stuff going on, but all they ever actually do is wait around for the main characters to do something for them to compliment or snark about, and maybe fighting offscreen. To me, the choice to have it be sci-fi at all felt more like a gimmick in order to stand out among the YA fantasies of the time while still courting that audience, rather than something they chose because they love it. Or maybe they did/do love it and are just bad at it, I don’t know. I think a lot of the reviewers who complained about the weird proper names and alien features on characters but not the weird consent stuff or tonal dissonance in “I’m a murderer but I’m sad but I’m gonna keep doing it” did so because the latter are more common in your standard romantasy and you’re either here for it or used to it enough to look past it, meanwhile the former stand out to someone who isn’t a regular sci-fi reader. Yes Zenith does it in a way that’s kind of awkward and annoying, but I can only imagine one of the side characters having scales being a dealbreaker for someone if they want to imagine everyone as sufficiently hot. Again, it feels like the authors tried to split the difference between space opera and YA fantasy and ended up not doing either very well so no one was satisfied.

Your thoughts on how the collaboration worked out are very interesting. I definitely guessed something closer to what Jay proposed, but I’d love to hear these two authors chat about the process for this book.

Random thoughts: -Thanks for posting this today! I had some paperwork to do and you guys helped me procrastinate for a few more hours. -The whole "group of girls who are badass fighters but also kids" thing gives me anime vibes. So does the dual-wielding katana lady. -I've always wondered about authors who overwhelm readers with proper nouns. My theory is that, since the author has lived with the story for such a long time, they forget that these terms are unintelligible to newbies. But then you'd think that a good editor or test reader would let them know to tone it down? -It's also weird to me when authors sprinkle in non-consent scenes...like...why? I can understand if they are a significant part of the story, but they usually aren't and could be removed or made more consensual pretty easily. I can't decide if the authors think this is edgy, or sexy, or they just don't realize what they are writing. Or maybe I'm just overly sensitive to this sort of thing? -I think that mind control in stories is usually lazy writing, meaning that it's something that the writer puts in because they don't want to do the work to actually explain why a character might do something contrary to what they would normally do. The exception to this would be if the mind control is the focus of the story. -Do readers actually care about a book being a "bestseller"? Like do readers ever look at a book and think "this looks boring and stupid, but it's a NYT Bestseller so I'll buy it"? -I like the idea of "a book of play." So many books feel like the author was just excited about a set of ideas and just wanted to throw them together. More like a campfire story than a planned-out narrative. Maybe it's best seen as a first draft that needs to be worked into a final product. Or something you'd read because your friend wrote it and you want to support them. It bugs me when these kinds of stories are sold to me like they are the next Dune or something. -What is the cover of the book supposed to be? -I want to see more DBT is sci-fi. Like a book where filling out a diary card is a key plot point. -"Not about his sexuality at all"..."I didn't mean for all those D's to be in there."

Building on the “weird girls playing pretend” theory, I feel like it also reads like a group of 12 year olds who discovered d&d but aren’t 100% sure how to run a campaign. It also reminds me in the best possible way of the book my two best friends and I tried to cowrite in middle school (it was called Monsters, Men, and Masquerades. yes, we were all very active on wattpad, why do you ask?) and that makes me kind of want to type it up and send it to yall. It’s not very good but it’s so sincere that it’s kind of endearing, looking back Edit: also I wanted to add that I really appreciate the way y’all framed this as a fun, cathartic writing exercise. I feel like that’s a pretty common experience. There are days where I find myself unable to write anything (fiction, schoolwork, nothing) until I spend an hour writing up my latest shitty self indulgent fanfiction idea, and while I save all of those things and kind of cherish them even though they often make me cringe, I would simply have to fake my death and move to a shack in the woods if anyone else ever saw them. I think it’s important to recognize that not everything you write has to be a masterpiece, and writing bad things can be fun or emotionally meaningful or even valuable experience for developing skills, but also it shouldn’t be published because it doesn’t mean the same thing to a reader as it does to the author

"Zahn Pasta" Out of the entire review, that joke is what stuck with me. I don't know how many actually noticed it, but I did, and I don't know why it was so funny, but I literally folded over from laughter. I also saw a LOT of paralells with a WIP I have, and let me notice a bunch of things that are blantantly bad in it. Probably going to keep those anyway, but at least I'll do it on purpose now.

I laughed so hard at "With science, dear girl" that my wife came to check on me to make sure I was okay. I usually use "With the magic of song and dance" as my non-explanation explanation of how I did something, but I'll definitely have to add that one to my repertoire.

Another great episode (I'm barely at the 2:57 mark)

Ahhh I get it there is no sound in space

It’s true that all robots are gay. Thank you for sharing this important information with the world.

The random sprinklings of Sonic lore is making this 100% better and I’m only 22 minutes in

Honestly? I kinda wanna write a high fantasy story now, with the twist being that ever so often it gets interrupted by two girls from the modern world discussing whether this plot point would make sense or not. I think that'd be really funny 😂

I need to mention a character from tactical breach wizards who's a doctor whose magic power is bringing someone who is dead body back an hour which brings them back to life if used soon enough and method of healing is shooting someone in the head then reverting them back to life because it only works on dead people.

I just bought Quicksilver to maybe critique................. Wish me luck ..... It's 622 pages

oh i haven't thought about this book in years

I hope you guys read the sequel

I gave the religion thing a thought. what if all the girls are decendats from Teran settlers? Would that work?

New video, who this? Edit: edgelord Dex