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april_steer's review

3.0
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Taking away half a star solely for the HP reference. Like, dude... no. What are you even doing.

I can see there is a lot of heart put into the book and I like that about it. Since the very beginning I personally disagreed with some of the authors takes on love for example but that's fine. Not too much aspecs think as radical.

Also, the purple glasses metaphor - yes, it's cute or whatever but it was also annoying. Why you name your book 'An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective [...]' and then talk about purple glasses and aspec lenses. What about green glasses? Hell, what about orange glasses? Because I promise, these three can be drastically different.

Despite that, I appreciated how the book really took into acount and talked about sex and romance. Aromantisism wasn't left in the dusk. On that regard, I liked it more than Eris Young 'Ace Voices'.

The constant metaphor talk about aspec lenses - and they was a lot of it - was cute but... I can't help but patronize it a bit. Because sometimes it really feels like the authors miss to put on the 'purple glasses' when talking and viewing some topics and themes. Like, on some occasions they really miss the point which made it funny how they emphasize the aspec lenses so much.

Overall, it was like a basic guide to aro/ace-ness and expect one or two things, there was nothing new in the store for me. Maybe I'll just simply stop reading a-spec nonfiction because I'm honestly not looking for an introduction to stuff I have known for years. I want deeper dive into some discussions - I especially want a deeper dive into the a-spec community and its opinions and views on (more specific) topics. Like the tensions between aros and aces, how the aspec community has put the QPRs on the pedestal romance once was, the deconstruction of the concept of love... This book touces briefly on some of these topics but again, this is basically just a beginners' guide.

I was surprised that there was a mention - a few paragraphs but still - of the aplatonic aspecs. I honestly didn't expect that. I wish more microlabels were at least mentioned - like loveless aros for example. But this would mean to undermines the 'love is love' statment, it would mean they'd have to discuss love as a social construct for real, etcetera, etcetera. Moving on.

It was very readeable and while I had some personal issues with it, I would definitely recommend it over 'Ace Voices' by Eris Young. 
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