Reviews tagging 'Racism'

A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney

15 reviews

citrus_seasalt's review

3.0

3! The premise was interesting, and I loved the representation, but the execution was..so-so. Firstly, because we didn’t spend a ton of time in Wonderland, especially with other residents, the world-building was done through exposition and not in a more organic way. I forgot which chapter it was, but most of it was just Maddi doing a lengthy backstory explanation on the different queens via mirror images.

Secondly, I didn’t like the romance! Alice has a lot of different people she crushes on in the book, which is fine because that’s what teenagers who get crushes do, but it resulted in this…weird pseudo love triangle?! Like, she almost kissed Chess, but spends the entire book thinking of Hatta. At least pick somebody, geez! (And then there’s her crush on the knight lady from the white queen’s kingdom, which I thought would go somewhere but no she got paired with the princess lol. But that wasn’t too surprising? Ok, those two were kinda cute but should’ve gotten more on-page time together.)

(But also..her and Hatta have a mentor-student dynamic, and I’m a little unsure how Wonderland Immortal Aging even works, so I’m not the only one who thinks that’s a little weird right?)

It also took too long for the plot to really kick off, I think. It isn’t until halfway when Hatta gets poisoned, and then a lot of said plot revolves around a MacGuffin. Point is, it doesn’t feel very solid, especially with the weaker Wonderland worldbuilding. I’ve heard the second book is stronger in this regard, hopefully that is actually the case! Again, an Alice with a darker story and more Buffy vibes is interesting.

Last gripes: Some of the writing felt more tell-not-show, didn’t like the one use of “orbs” instead of eyes, how did Alice just…never hesitate to get back out of the house or at least think things through a little more after her no-nonsense mom kept catching her sneaking out and got mad at the later and later times she got back?! Alice please be so fr LMAO

Anyhow! Overall though, this wasn’t a bad read, it’s not a ⭐️3 in the same way “Belladonna” narrowly avoided a 2.75, but it had its fair share of flaws and I was hoping for the story to feel stronger in its structure.

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midnightgremlin's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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allie_schick's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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rjstellar's review

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adventurous emotional funny informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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monicalaurette's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

What a great read! This book has been sitting on my TBR for a while, and it was only after I was given the book for Christmas in 2020 that I was finally able to read it (granted a decent while after I was given it).

This book was first in my head as a sort of re-telling of Alice in Wonderland, but I only a few pages in did I realize that wasn’t the case. It was so much more. Instead of our Alice being a “new Alice” like many retellings, she is a fighter, a protector of Wonderland.

“...even when you’re careful, even when you play by the rules, it might not be enough.”

The premise of Alice being a fighter and the Nightmares that she does fight is a really wonderful twist on Alice in Wonderland to me. To see some of the characters interacting with our world and the different circumstances to why they are not in their homeland was very unique.

I also liked how during the book, while Alice is trying to stop all the bad that is happening, that she was still worrying about home and being back home dealing with those repercussions. I feel that sometimes in books like this their home life is only thought of and never a big part of the storyline that adds to the tension.

Friendship is something so important to me in books, like above all if there aren’t any good friendships, how is the character supposed to advance in their life? And the friendship between Courtney and Alice was just that.

I gave this story 4.5 stars because I really liked it, and it was different from other Fantasy and Young Adult books that I have read. It was different to see that they continued to live in their real world while also working in Wonderland, and sometimes it threw me a little.

I knew that Brionne’s murder was going to be brought back into the book later, but honestly thought her like spirit would be made into a Nightmare, to just add further insult to injury for Alice, but the way that it did tie in was done in a great way to show that now matter what, the emotions are still tied to a spot as well as a person.

AOIUDNAOIABLEJOSNABOI NOT MADDIE MY SWEET MULTI-COLORED EYE LOVE!

Having the Tweedles be Dreamwalkers as well was fun because it gave a little more life to the characters than just some bumbling idiots that Alice has to decipher.

I KNEW ODABETH AND XELON WOULD KISS IM SO HAPPY IT HAPPENED I KNEW IT! I could just tell from the first time they interacted that it was either an already established relationship or it was the sort of feelings that both liked each other but didn’t know the other did until the end. All in all very good, we love seeing the LGBTQ+

When they were talking with Odabeth the first time I think she mentioned having a sibling but then it like wasn’t brought up again so I don’t know if that will be brought in later or if I missed the part in Odabeth talking that the sibling is no longer like the Red Queen

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anainthecastle's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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girlonbooks's review

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

💔💔💔💔 (four stars as rated in hearts so broken because THAT ENDING 😭)

It’s no easy job slaying demons by night while maintaining the facade of normal teenager by day. And for Alice, whose mother is rapidly losing patience with never knowing her daughter’s whereabouts, the balance between those dueling identities hangs precariously. When Alice’s demon-slaying mentor and friend, Hatta, is poisoned and it’s up to Alice to save him, she must venture into Wonderland, abandoning her life in “the real world” at a rather inopportune moment. Will she and her cast of sidekicks be able to save their friend before it’s too late? And who is the mysterious and dangerous Black Knight who always seems to be a step ahead of them?

“Knowledge is power, and the world is set against you knowing anything, so when someone’s trying to teach you something, pay attention.”

It is impossible to remove a book from its context so my review of this book is going to consist mostly of what I realized and experienced while read this book in April of 2021. First, this book was published in 2018 – before most white people – including myself – payed much (if any) mind to anti-racism work, so let’s just be honest about that. I only recently discovered this series and because of that you are now reading this review in 2021, after the murder of Breonna Taylor, after a global protest movement began in the summer of 2020 and – as of less than 24 hours ago and after almost a year of demonstrations – Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts for the murder of George Floyd.

Let’s now go back a bit to when, upon A Blade So Black’s initial release, author L.L. McKinney was deemed a mean, angry Black woman by a bunch of fragile white reviewers who decided that, since McKinney had the AUDACITY to call out white people on issues of privilege and race on twitter it was within their right to tank the reviews of her book on Goodreads. This is pretty standard behavior by white supremacists, to be honest. It literally happens to authors of color constantly. I can think of several instances off the top of my head, but that is for another blog post.

Being brand new to #booktwt (book twitter) and relatively new to reviewing, I only learned about this a few weeks ago, just in time for another white author to absolutely lose her shit on reviewers (for giving her a 4.5 rating??), compare her own cancellation to the holocaust and rape culture respectively and then DEMAND that GR take down the negative reviews she received because of her behavior. GR eventually – because of course they did – obliged. The double standard here is absolutely infuriating and really only emphasizes the dangerous power of white fragility.

No such courtesy has ever been extended to L.L. McKinney or any other author of color (to my knowledge) when white supremacists have tanked their reviews. The third book in the Nightmare-verse series, A Crown so Cursed – the ARCs for which haven’t even been released yet, are already receiving 1 star reviews from the people who couldn’t handle being called out on their ignorance in 2018. As usual, Goodreads (and Amazon by extension) is completely silent about this.

If you peruse the one star reviews for A Blade So Black as I have done, you will quickly realize that there is basically one reason for any and all low ratings: white readers were made uncomfortable that this book challenges their idea of privilege or race AND that a Black woman dared to speak up about it. Now that white people, and white feminists especially, have had their big “anti-racism awakening,” where are the apologies for McKinney? Where is the accountability from the black-square-posters and hashtag-i’m-listening-ers that flooded her reviews with hate and threats less than three years ago?

A primary plot point of A Blade So Black is how the death of a young Black girl named Breonne – who was shot and killed at a football game – has shaken the city of Atlanta. Breonne was in high school, Breonne was minding her own business, and Breonne was murdered anyway. In the wake of Breonne’s death, Alice struggles with the responsibility to protect a world that doesn’t do anything to take care of Black women like her and Breonne; a world that, on the contrary, targets, exploits and abuses them. This theme by McKinney is absolutely incredible! I was blown away. We don’t even need to look at the murder of Breonne and say that it is of course reminiscent of the murder of Breonna Taylor. Because the fact is that Black men and women are murdered by police with such frequency that it was just a matter of time before one inexcusable murder or another mirrored Breonne’s. How maddening and disgusting is that!?!? In Breonne we see Atatiana Jefferson, Sandra Bland and – as of mere hours after the Chauvin verdict – Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16 year old girl who was shot by police after calling them for help.

The reality is that Black women are never going to make racism palatable enough of a topic for white fragility – not even if they write it BEAUTIFULLY in an incredibly original and innovative fantasy series as McKinney has done. with A Blade So Black. The fact is that, knowing this, white reviewers like me (and you if you are white and reading this) need to be louder in calling out white supremacist behavior when we see it in publishing, from authors, on blogs, booktwt, bookstagram, etc. It can’t come down to the labor of AOCs to squash an issue perpetuated primarily by whiteness and white people. We need to actually do better and that means stepping tf up. It means elevating marginailized voices. And yes, it may mean missing out on an ARC here or there because when you take a stand against white supremacy it typically denies you some opportunities. Do it anyway. You’ll survive, POC might not.

Realistically, Chauvin’s murder conviction does very little – if anything – to combat systemic racism. The guilty verdict only came about because of the constant protests, the incessant social media campaigns, the civil unrest, the good trouble – the movement led almost entirely by Black women, btw – and because, of course, the murder of George Floyd was caught on camera. So when I say white people need to step it up, what I mean is don’t you dare tell me you’re tired. Don’t you dare tell me you’re scared. Don’t you dare take your foot off the gas. We are only getting started and we need you.

“Promise me you’ll be careful. I know you already are, just”—she lifted her hand from Alice’s knee, made a fist, then forced her fingers loose to pat her knee again, squeezing—“even when you’re careful, even when you play by the rules, it might not be enough. Gotta go the extra mile out here.”

✨ Rep in this book: Black Protagonist, own voices, queer side characters

✨ Content warnings for this book: death of a parent, violence, racism, police brutality, death, war and battle

Content Warnings