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anaya13's review
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Kidnapping, War, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Murder
poppywarphan's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Arc provided by publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All of this is was my immediate impression during and after I read the book. Kind of spoilery. Also, tw for child sacrifice and human trafficking, among other things
Sapphic rep, lots of politics, though women, betrayal and blood. The story takes place over multiple years and follows multiple characters. There was a lot of describing and less dialogue. The beginning was very hard to get through and I almost dnf'd this. After my initial struggle I did come to quite like it however it still kept occasionally throwing some weird fertility/sex/impregnation/birth stuff, that made me uncomfortable, into my face. I'm not a fan of how the author decided to construct her matriarchy. I was hoping for a functional harmonious society not a flipped patriarchy where men are the ones who have to fight for equality and are used only for siring children and as lovers. The personal relationships between the men and women felt shallow. Women either discarded them or they themselves left because they were neglected/dissatisfied.
In this world there are five queendoms. Scorpica - warriors, Bastion - scholars, Arca - magic, Sestia - religion or something, Paxim - diplomacy. Girls and women are valued while the men are deemed week and useless. Newborn boys are sold or traded (at least in Scorpica). Girls stop being born which is a catastrophe especially for Scorpica because men aren't allowed to be warriors. (One does show up and asks to be one but the queen just kills him.) In fact, girls are so needed the scorpican queen decides they will take them from elsewhere (and declares them her daughters because she's love/attention starved.) and causes a war to start brewing.
The characters:
• previously mentioned scorpican queen and her new daughters
• a girl with all-magic (which makes her a threat to the queen of Arca. Something about having a claim to the throne) who was in hiding with her mother and some buff woman who had decided to take them under her protection
• the queen of Arca and her daughter
• the previous scorpican queen, her daughter and her advisor best friend
• a sorceress who wants to take over all the queendoms
This was mostly the first half. I did add details after finishing the whole thing but didn't summarize the 2nd part because I got lazy. It wasn't clearly explained why the girls had stopped being born. Some magic?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this.
Sapphic rep, lots of politics, though women, betrayal and blood. The story takes place over multiple years and follows multiple characters. There was a lot of describing and less dialogue. The beginning was very hard to get through and I almost dnf'd this. After my initial struggle I did come to quite like it however it still kept occasionally throwing some weird fertility/sex/impregnation/birth stuff, that made me uncomfortable, into my face. I'm not a fan of how the author decided to construct her matriarchy. I was hoping for a functional harmonious society not a flipped patriarchy where men are the ones who have to fight for equality and are used only for siring children and as lovers. The personal relationships between the men and women felt shallow. Women either discarded them or they themselves left because they were neglected/dissatisfied.
In this world there are five queendoms. Scorpica - warriors, Bastion - scholars, Arca - magic, Sestia - religion or something, Paxim - diplomacy. Girls and women are valued while the men are deemed week and useless. Newborn boys are sold or traded (at least in Scorpica). Girls stop being born which is a catastrophe especially for Scorpica because men aren't allowed to be warriors. (One does show up and asks to be one but the queen just kills him.) In fact, girls are so needed the scorpican queen decides they will take them from elsewhere (and declares them her daughters because she's love/attention starved.) and causes a war to start brewing.
The characters:
• previously mentioned scorpican queen and her new daughters
• a girl with all-magic (which makes her a threat to the queen of Arca. Something about having a claim to the throne) who was in hiding with her mother and some buff woman who had decided to take them under her protection
• the queen of Arca and her daughter
• the previous scorpican queen, her daughter and her advisor best friend
• a sorceress who wants to take over all the queendoms
This was mostly the first half. I did add details after finishing the whole thing but didn't summarize the 2nd part because I got lazy. It wasn't clearly explained why the girls had stopped being born. Some magic?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Pregnancy, Body horror, Child death, Murder, Blood, and Sexual content
Minor: Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Torture, Trafficking, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Medical content, and Slavery
maggieslibrarycard's review
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
2.0
Scorpica by G. R. McAllister
2 stars
Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Death/Death of a Parent/Death of Children, Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Sexual Content/Sexual Violence towards a Minor
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
While there were some parts of this book that I had a fun time reading, I think all of its elements were unfortunately at best just okay.
The book takes place in five matriarchal queendoms, and follows the lives of a primarily female cast, as well as the reactions of the rulers of these realms, when AFAB children stop being born.
While there was a large cast of characters, including many different POV characters, I really never found myself growing attached to any of them, connecting to them, or even rooting for them to succeed in their chapters. All of the characters felt very flat, and underdeveloped to me, and all of the POVs had the same voice, which resulted in all the different characters feeling inauthentic and indistinct. As well, after finishing the book, it felt to me like a lot of the POV characters did not have satisfying conclusions to their arcs, and that the purpose of their chapters was mostly just to introduce other elements of the book, which in my opinion is indicative of poor narrative planning.
I think a lot of my issues with the characters come down to the author primarily telling the readers things in the prose, and not showing them. While I didn’t have any issues with the prose style of the book, we as readers were told a lot of things about the personalities and motivations of various characters in the novel, but it was less common for these characteristics to be displayed through their actions.
The pacing choices for this book were interesting, and the end result of the plot made me feel like this was almost more of a prequel to the series than the first book. (Which is completely okay! Just something to expect before you start reading so you don’t feel dissatisfied with the ending.) To that end, while the book was, in my opinion, fairly fast paced, it was very episodic, in that we would follow a particular character for a chapter and then not jump back to them for several years in the world’s timeline. There were a lot of time skips, and, as I mentioned before, a lot of POV characters introduced who were only included in a few chapters, which contributed to the prequel-esque and episodic feeling I got while reading. Again, not a bad thing! Just something to be aware of before starting to read.
Another big critique of the book was the limited world-building. While there are multiple queendoms, they all seem to operate in essentially the same way and we don’t learn a lot about the culture, magic system, and history of the entire realm beyond what is required for the plot, or the distinct natures of each of the queendoms, besides their focus on different industries. This is always one of my favourite aspects of fantasy books, so I was really disappointed that it wasn’t included very much here. I was also really hoping the book’s focus on women would result in it displaying different sorts of matriarchal societies in the different queendoms, which wasn’t really the case. As well, I was hoping there would be a more nuanced examination of gender and gender roles in the book. The difference between a person’s sex and gender is never really brought up, and children are determined to be male or female at birth. There is one non-binary character in this book - albeit a priest who exists mainly outside of the queendoms’ society - so I hope that in future books the author will critique the gender binary which seems to dictate a lot of the society’s operations. However, I should add that I am cisgender, so I would suggest referring to a non-cis reader for a more nuanced examination of these themes within the novel, as I don’t want to speak for or over the trans and non-binary community with regards to this topic!
There was a huge focus on sex and sexual content, which is fine, but I did find it strange that in a novel where this was such a key focus that there was only one minor f/f relationship, and other non-heteronormative sexualities were basically ignored.
The following section contains minor spoilers for the book, but I found it very concerning, so I felt the need to include it in my review.
During one passage in the book, a character, who is at this point a minor, is mourning the loss of one of her very close friends. To “help” her “cope” with this lose, another (adult) character who is in a position of authority over her by demonstrating the use of a sex toy on the minor’s body, which is described in fairly heavy detail and, most concerningly of all, was described in a positive light and the problematic nature of this encounter was never addressed. While I wasn’t in love with this book before this scene, it to me was a moderately fun and fast-paced read that I wasn’t expecting to think too much about after the ending. However, this section completely soured the reading experience for me and made me very uncomfortable. I was probably going to give this book a solid 2.5-3 stars before reading this scene, but I really couldn’t do that in good conscience after this part of the book.
2 stars
Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Death/Death of a Parent/Death of Children, Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Sexual Content/Sexual Violence towards a Minor
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
While there were some parts of this book that I had a fun time reading, I think all of its elements were unfortunately at best just okay.
The book takes place in five matriarchal queendoms, and follows the lives of a primarily female cast, as well as the reactions of the rulers of these realms, when AFAB children stop being born.
While there was a large cast of characters, including many different POV characters, I really never found myself growing attached to any of them, connecting to them, or even rooting for them to succeed in their chapters. All of the characters felt very flat, and underdeveloped to me, and all of the POVs had the same voice, which resulted in all the different characters feeling inauthentic and indistinct. As well, after finishing the book, it felt to me like a lot of the POV characters did not have satisfying conclusions to their arcs, and that the purpose of their chapters was mostly just to introduce other elements of the book, which in my opinion is indicative of poor narrative planning.
I think a lot of my issues with the characters come down to the author primarily telling the readers things in the prose, and not showing them. While I didn’t have any issues with the prose style of the book, we as readers were told a lot of things about the personalities and motivations of various characters in the novel, but it was less common for these characteristics to be displayed through their actions.
The pacing choices for this book were interesting, and the end result of the plot made me feel like this was almost more of a prequel to the series than the first book. (Which is completely okay! Just something to expect before you start reading so you don’t feel dissatisfied with the ending.) To that end, while the book was, in my opinion, fairly fast paced, it was very episodic, in that we would follow a particular character for a chapter and then not jump back to them for several years in the world’s timeline. There were a lot of time skips, and, as I mentioned before, a lot of POV characters introduced who were only included in a few chapters, which contributed to the prequel-esque and episodic feeling I got while reading. Again, not a bad thing! Just something to be aware of before starting to read.
Another big critique of the book was the limited world-building. While there are multiple queendoms, they all seem to operate in essentially the same way and we don’t learn a lot about the culture, magic system, and history of the entire realm beyond what is required for the plot, or the distinct natures of each of the queendoms, besides their focus on different industries. This is always one of my favourite aspects of fantasy books, so I was really disappointed that it wasn’t included very much here. I was also really hoping the book’s focus on women would result in it displaying different sorts of matriarchal societies in the different queendoms, which wasn’t really the case. As well, I was hoping there would be a more nuanced examination of gender and gender roles in the book. The difference between a person’s sex and gender is never really brought up, and children are determined to be male or female at birth. There is one non-binary character in this book - albeit a priest who exists mainly outside of the queendoms’ society - so I hope that in future books the author will critique the gender binary which seems to dictate a lot of the society’s operations. However, I should add that I am cisgender, so I would suggest referring to a non-cis reader for a more nuanced examination of these themes within the novel, as I don’t want to speak for or over the trans and non-binary community with regards to this topic!
There was a huge focus on sex and sexual content, which is fine, but I did find it strange that in a novel where this was such a key focus that there was only one minor f/f relationship, and other non-heteronormative sexualities were basically ignored.
The following section contains minor spoilers for the book, but I found it very concerning, so I felt the need to include it in my review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, and War
Moderate: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Pregnancy, and Transphobia
Minor: Alcohol and Alcoholism
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