Shané Oosthuizen

Yeah.

It's incredibly high stakes right from the beginning.

Yeah.

It's a good sign.

And I feel like something that's probably, I mean, it would have been done in fantasy for a long time, but I kind of liken it to the like second love interest effect.

Yes.

I mean, I ascribe to Sarah J. Maas as having, you know.

absolutely paved the way yeah um but yeah i think that's becoming something what's more common so it was interesting seeing that kind of done in the friendship way where again you kind of think oh this is the person this is our buddy we're gonna stick along with them and then they're ripped away and it was so beautiful because like she didn't want to make friends but she had to she was not here to make friends she wasn't she was just here to find her sister yeah she brought along on this journey trapped in a bunch of trials which is just really the classic yeah

It's very Katniss of her.

Like I think going back to how I think a lot of the most popular romantic books at the moment, they really do stem.

Like I feel like you could draw a through line from those key pivotal YA books that we all loved and how they're kind of in this grown up, exciting, sometimes spicy.

format um now because I mean like Meryn she I guess the whole premise at the start is that she has this 12 year old-ish sister that she's looking after and immediately immediately my mind at least went to Katniss and Prim and the tribe with the mum it's like the hopeless mum yes the parallels of yeah it's very Feyre as well like it's like why are the parents always like where the parents have to be useless yeah they either have to be dead or useless yeah it's

Yeah.

You have to be orphaned or parentified.

Or I come in with this pre kind of determined special skill.

Like it's very, I mean, Throne of Glass is also trials.

There's so many trials because it is such a fun format to kind of,

shape a fantasy book around and I feel like it's a way that even if you're a non-fantasy reader people can kind of immediately tap into that but I was talking to Izzy about this as well where there seems to be this trend now that um the protagonists of these fantasy novels they always now have this skill or this ability not so much in Diabound I mean Meryn does have her ability to fight and we will talk about some of the other special things that happen later

um but I feel like where was the era of um you know Twilight and Bella Swan and the kind of I'm just a bumbling kind of awkward there's nothing special about me until the love interest like sees me and then they find something special but now everyone which is kind of it's so much it's very fun to read but it's just interesting and I'm like I did kind of think as well could this be tracked through the kind of social media book talk rise where you know I think people like all of us now we are kind of

feeling like the main character in our own stories.