I actually still enjoyed it for the most part last time I went through. Jerry’s standup is terrible and I have no clue how he ever got an audience, but the actual show I enjoyed most of, even if nowadays pretty much all the plots would be solved because everyone would have a cell phone.

Ah. Shame I left it already wanting my time back for the first book

To be clear, I only read the first book because I was not interested in reading more (read: actively annoyed that nothing interesting happened).

As for YA, that’s easy. It falls over the tropes (which, to be fair, it could have been early/first in). This post had been a favorite of mine for years, the “Protagonist” section is 2 for 3. Where it does somewhat lean out of the genre is its world, which is not just thinly-veiled school or the like.

As for what we actually see in the first book, though, we get an often-told YA story that happens to occur in an exceptionally well-thought out world.

Dune.

It’s Y/A trash that had the benefit of coming out a long time ago and so being ensconced in scifi culture.

I’ll give that it is interesting for its world, its one unique aspect, but the actual plot - chosen-one special boy’s dad dies and so he immediately becomes the married leader of a group of locals and stages an insurrection against the antagonist in revenge - is so worn out you can barely turn the pages.

But I’m sure back when it came out, all the adolescents were drooling over the piles of teenage wish fulfillment.

Just to mention it, this is literally named the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect on TVTropes