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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
It's really 2.5*. I read a review of this book that promised queer polyamorous elves, and technically that is delivered, but it's not a sexy book at all. It's a frustrating book.
This book doesn't actually start until about 3/4 of the way through. Before that, we're introduced to Ariah, who is...well, he's just a ninny. He's selfish and careless without even knowing, and he uses people - but they let him, so who am I to complain? I mean, he always has insanely devoted friends. However, Ariah's thoughtlessness made it hard for me to sympathize with his plight literally ever, because he made so much trouble for himself and everyone else. He spends a good portion of the book stoned and shirking his responsibility to learn to control his gifts. He's a very strange choice for a protagonist.
We're introduced to the ideas that there are different kinds of elves, including mixed elves, and they're all oppressed by an evil empire. Some of them have more status and autonomy than others, but it's never made clear why. There's magic too, but it's so vaguely defined that I'm still not sure what Ariah was supposed to be able to do. Charms, reading, counting, shaping. Shaping! WTF was that? Clairvoyance? Telepathy? Some sort of psychic doxxing?? It turned Ariah into a person apparently anyone could just have sex with, which wasn't really explained. So there are a lot of ideas thrown out on the page, but for me it never gelled because I wanted it to make sense, and not just hand-wave *magic*. Like, your fictional magic system can make internal sense even if it doesn't make sense in our world.
But about 3/4 of the way through, Ariah travels and meets some new elves, and their society is actually kind of explained, and the skills that Ariah somehow mastered after all come in handy. Ariah can't go home for legitimate reasons, but he misses his old friends (and I did too). Anyway, it does have a happy ending.
The cover illustration is one of the most beautiful book covers I've ever seen, and that, along with the promise of queer polyamorous elves, made me buy the book. It was a quick read, and I didn't hate it, but I did want to yell at Ariah for most of it. I just don't really suffer fools, and Ariah is King Fool.
This book doesn't actually start until about 3/4 of the way through. Before that, we're introduced to Ariah, who is...well, he's just a ninny. He's selfish and careless without even knowing, and he uses people - but they let him, so who am I to complain? I mean, he always has insanely devoted friends. However, Ariah's thoughtlessness made it hard for me to sympathize with his plight literally ever, because he made so much trouble for himself and everyone else. He spends a good portion of the book stoned and shirking his responsibility to learn to control his gifts. He's a very strange choice for a protagonist.
We're introduced to the ideas that there are different kinds of elves, including mixed elves, and they're all oppressed by an evil empire. Some of them have more status and autonomy than others, but it's never made clear why. There's magic too, but it's so vaguely defined that I'm still not sure what Ariah was supposed to be able to do. Charms, reading, counting, shaping. Shaping! WTF was that? Clairvoyance? Telepathy? Some sort of psychic doxxing?? It turned Ariah into a person apparently anyone could just have sex with, which wasn't really explained. So there are a lot of ideas thrown out on the page, but for me it never gelled because I wanted it to make sense, and not just hand-wave *magic*. Like, your fictional magic system can make internal sense even if it doesn't make sense in our world.
But about 3/4 of the way through, Ariah travels and meets some new elves, and their society is actually kind of explained, and the skills that Ariah somehow mastered after all come in handy. Ariah can't go home for legitimate reasons, but he misses his old friends (and I did too). Anyway, it does have a happy ending.
The cover illustration is one of the most beautiful book covers I've ever seen, and that, along with the promise of queer polyamorous elves, made me buy the book. It was a quick read, and I didn't hate it, but I did want to yell at Ariah for most of it. I just don't really suffer fools, and Ariah is King Fool.
I think I'm going to have to DNF this one. It's been a week and I've only read 20% of it. That's not great.
My first issue is that I'm not a huge fan of the way this was written. It felt like mostly summary and exposition. We get a lot of Ariah telling us about the world and the culture which is fine but it got to be a bit much. Not to mention the sheer amount of time jumps. There's a four year jump between the first and second chapter, which really does not feel like it. It feels like it's only been about a day but Ariah tells us it's been four years. Then later we get a couple weeks (maybe even months) during which there was supposed to be chemistry building between Ariah and another character but we don't see it because it was skipped, so the sudden romance that blossomed felt very insta-love because we didn't see the chemistry.
There's also a really uncomfortable lack of consent in this at least as far as I got. Ariah's ear is pierced without his consent. He's basically forced to sleep in the same bed as another man, who gets naked, which makes Ariah incredibly uncomfortable. Then there's a point where that man "charms" Ariah to make Ariah kiss him and gets mad at Ariah for being upset about being charmed. Oh and then the mentor who apparently likes Ariah enough to bring him to meet his family, pretty much disowns him when Ariah says that the mentor's brother basically tried to rape him. It just left a very bad taste in my mouth and I found I really did not want to keep reading.
Very disappointing.
My first issue is that I'm not a huge fan of the way this was written. It felt like mostly summary and exposition. We get a lot of Ariah telling us about the world and the culture which is fine but it got to be a bit much. Not to mention the sheer amount of time jumps. There's a four year jump between the first and second chapter, which really does not feel like it. It feels like it's only been about a day but Ariah tells us it's been four years. Then later we get a couple weeks (maybe even months) during which there was supposed to be chemistry building between Ariah and another character but we don't see it because it was skipped, so the sudden romance that blossomed felt very insta-love because we didn't see the chemistry.
There's also a really uncomfortable lack of consent in this at least as far as I got. Ariah's ear is pierced without his consent. He's basically forced to sleep in the same bed as another man, who gets naked, which makes Ariah incredibly uncomfortable. Then there's a point where that man "charms" Ariah to make Ariah kiss him and gets mad at Ariah for being upset about being charmed. Oh and then the mentor who apparently likes Ariah enough to bring him to meet his family, pretty much disowns him when Ariah says that the mentor's brother basically tried to rape him. It just left a very bad taste in my mouth and I found I really did not want to keep reading.
Very disappointing.
saying this book pissed me off is an understatement more to come later when I have calmed down
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book wrecked me in the best way. It is so hard to find books that are polyamorous and unique and have a range of gender and the ending made me cry
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
slow-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:
Complicated
I'm so glad that I picked up this book - Ariah is a story full of adventure, love, and an amazingly built world. The details of the story felt perfect every time. This will be a favorite for a long time!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Trafficking, Abandonment
Minor: Animal death, Death of parent
This is an amazing, thought-provoking queer fantasy bildungsroman. I loved reading this. It has a few issues, but I love it for what is and what it's about. It's about people and love and home and acceptance and being different and figuring out what matters in life. It's super queer and it embraces queerness in an amazing way. It's well-written, engaging, thoughtful, and so moving. It's a book that leaves a strong impression. This is definitely one of my favourite books I've read this year and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I am not going to recommend this book to anyone except people who I don't know and don't know me. Reading this was like someone had cut me open and then twisted every single part of me into something cohesive, something beautiful, something that makes sense.
I loved this. I more than loved it. I lived in this book, i breathed this book, for the first time in ages I couldn't read anything else, I couldn't let myself out of this amazing world, the characters, everything. I can't even review it without feeling like I'm revealing too much, both about this book and about me.
All i can say is: Thank you, B. R. Sanders.
I loved this. I more than loved it. I lived in this book, i breathed this book, for the first time in ages I couldn't read anything else, I couldn't let myself out of this amazing world, the characters, everything. I can't even review it without feeling like I'm revealing too much, both about this book and about me.
All i can say is: Thank you, B. R. Sanders.
I received a review copy via Netgalley for an honest review.
Hier geht's zur deutschen Rezension.
________________________
Content Note:
Molestation linked to how magic works as well as rape, which is all problematised and never romantacised. Racism - as an allegory against elves and written by a white person. Queerphobic language which is also used by the main character at first, but always questioned.
"Ariah" … "Ariah" is actually a very special book to me. It was quite different to what I was expecting, but that was partially because of how easy I forget things. This book is more like a autobiography written by the eponymous character when he's much older and more seasoned than at the beginning of the story – which starts just when he came of age, which is 30 for elves. At the end, he'll be in his mid-fifties.
It's a little bit of a coming-of-age story as well. Ariah is young, lived in a very restrictive society due to which he is afraid of his own magical abilities, which he tries to hide, and he is queerphobic. Only after a while, after meeting very different people, after living in very different societies, he starts to learn, to see that others live their lives completely differently. His understanding of himself is transformed, as well as his relationship to magic and his understanding of his sexuality as well.
Plotwise, the book is rather slow or should I say: directionless? There is not one event the story is working towards, no aim … It is Ariah's life, the way he lives it. And even though some details seem a bit too random and lucky, it doesn't get boring, it's just calmer. For one thing, there are still big and partially traumatic events. And it's other, over-arching themes that make this book so interesting. There is one thing, though, people might struggle with: everything happening seems a bit constricted at times, when a few sentences describe two years, a few chapters a whole ten years. This way, more than two decades can be dealt with in 300+ pages, but sometimes I did miss the details, the depth. Still, B. R. Sanders manages to create tight bonds between the characters. Just the ending didn't feel like one, it just fit perfectly into the narrative structure so far and the story might as well have continued that way.
Another thing I wasn't always too happy with is a lack of explanation. Sanders never explicitly explains in detail which kinds of elves there are and what makes them them. All the information we get is mentioned in passing whenever it fits – which is actually pretty great if it'd just work all the time. Even now I'm not 100% sure I got everything right. What I can say is: there's at least four kinds of elves who differ both in looks and societal structures. There's silver elves – dark-skinned and white-haired – who have a very strict and queerphobic society. Red elves – light-skinned, red-haired and green-eyed – live a lot freer and don't mind polyamorous relationships either. Same goes for dark elves – with blue, grey or black skin and dark, tightly curled hair. Gold elves – brown-skinned and blond – live as nomads in a completely genderneutral society. And of course there's mixed families where these traits are combined, for example Ariah whose skin is light, his hair white and his eyes green, whereas one of his love interests has grey skin and red hair. Those various societies have also very different approaches to magic. Silver elves control and hide it, others are more open with it: gold elves are always connected by their magic and communicate their emotions with each other at all times.
It's in relation to these elves that the book discusses racism – though more as an allegory. People called the Qin discriminate against elves who are separated from the Qin population, have to accept hard and dangerous factory jobs, get racially profiled and stolen from and who are unlawfully detained at borders. Gold elves are even held as slaves. Within the elves, there's prejudices as well – especially silver elves look down on other societies for not being "proper" and "right". Additionally, the author adds other topics such as sexuality and explores the intersections of discrimination, which does mirror the ones we know from our (Western) society. (It should be mentioned here that the author is white though genderqueer, so not all aspects are told from own experiences.)
What I liked especially was how clear it became how much of an influence societal norms have on our way of thinking. At the start, Ariah is very averse to the idea of being with other men, but with time he becomes more open and in the end is even sexually attracted to men – change brought along because he was made to think, yes, but also because society stopped telling him how wrong all this supposedly is. And how free love is shown to be! There are several happy, polyamorous relationships. They don't always work out but with the right partners, communication and honesty, much can be gained. "Ariah" is very different in this from other fantasy novels, which keep reproducing our problems and norms without really challenging much of it. "Ariah" takes a step further. Mixed families aren't well-received with silver elves – which is hypocritical as there are so many of them and nothing wrong about it either. Silver elves don't accept polyamorous relationships or families – and yet, the family of Ariah's mentor is a great example of how much good these can do. Most elves think in binary genders – and yet there are the gold elves who don't differentiate genders, who are one even though their bodies aren't all the same. Human bodies supposedly work one way or another according to their gender – the boundaries are much more fluid for all elves as male elves's bodies react to parenthood as well, they start lactating for example. With every new concept that challenged the usual – and my! – assumptions about how societies and bodies ought to work, my excitement grew.
"Ariah" is fantasy the way it should be – some of it comes from our (Western) society and is prolematised, but Sanders shows that things can be very different and keeps challenging readers to think differently, to change tracks. This is also the first time a fictional story felt so much like an autobiography to me. I would've liked a bit more thrill at times, and definitely some more explanations about the elves, but otherwise this books gets an unconditional recommendation.
Hier geht's zur deutschen Rezension.
________________________
Content Note:
Molestation linked to how magic works as well as rape, which is all problematised and never romantacised. Racism - as an allegory against elves and written by a white person. Queerphobic language which is also used by the main character at first, but always questioned.
"Ariah" … "Ariah" is actually a very special book to me. It was quite different to what I was expecting, but that was partially because of how easy I forget things. This book is more like a autobiography written by the eponymous character when he's much older and more seasoned than at the beginning of the story – which starts just when he came of age, which is 30 for elves. At the end, he'll be in his mid-fifties.
It's a little bit of a coming-of-age story as well. Ariah is young, lived in a very restrictive society due to which he is afraid of his own magical abilities, which he tries to hide, and he is queerphobic. Only after a while, after meeting very different people, after living in very different societies, he starts to learn, to see that others live their lives completely differently. His understanding of himself is transformed, as well as his relationship to magic and his understanding of his sexuality as well.
Plotwise, the book is rather slow or should I say: directionless? There is not one event the story is working towards, no aim … It is Ariah's life, the way he lives it. And even though some details seem a bit too random and lucky, it doesn't get boring, it's just calmer. For one thing, there are still big and partially traumatic events. And it's other, over-arching themes that make this book so interesting. There is one thing, though, people might struggle with: everything happening seems a bit constricted at times, when a few sentences describe two years, a few chapters a whole ten years. This way, more than two decades can be dealt with in 300+ pages, but sometimes I did miss the details, the depth. Still, B. R. Sanders manages to create tight bonds between the characters. Just the ending didn't feel like one, it just fit perfectly into the narrative structure so far and the story might as well have continued that way.
Another thing I wasn't always too happy with is a lack of explanation. Sanders never explicitly explains in detail which kinds of elves there are and what makes them them. All the information we get is mentioned in passing whenever it fits – which is actually pretty great if it'd just work all the time. Even now I'm not 100% sure I got everything right. What I can say is: there's at least four kinds of elves who differ both in looks and societal structures. There's silver elves – dark-skinned and white-haired – who have a very strict and queerphobic society. Red elves – light-skinned, red-haired and green-eyed – live a lot freer and don't mind polyamorous relationships either. Same goes for dark elves – with blue, grey or black skin and dark, tightly curled hair. Gold elves – brown-skinned and blond – live as nomads in a completely genderneutral society. And of course there's mixed families where these traits are combined, for example Ariah whose skin is light, his hair white and his eyes green, whereas one of his love interests has grey skin and red hair. Those various societies have also very different approaches to magic. Silver elves control and hide it, others are more open with it: gold elves are always connected by their magic and communicate their emotions with each other at all times.
It's in relation to these elves that the book discusses racism – though more as an allegory. People called the Qin discriminate against elves who are separated from the Qin population, have to accept hard and dangerous factory jobs, get racially profiled and stolen from and who are unlawfully detained at borders. Gold elves are even held as slaves. Within the elves, there's prejudices as well – especially silver elves look down on other societies for not being "proper" and "right". Additionally, the author adds other topics such as sexuality and explores the intersections of discrimination, which does mirror the ones we know from our (Western) society. (It should be mentioned here that the author is white though genderqueer, so not all aspects are told from own experiences.)
What I liked especially was how clear it became how much of an influence societal norms have on our way of thinking. At the start, Ariah is very averse to the idea of being with other men, but with time he becomes more open and in the end is even sexually attracted to men – change brought along because he was made to think, yes, but also because society stopped telling him how wrong all this supposedly is. And how free love is shown to be! There are several happy, polyamorous relationships. They don't always work out but with the right partners, communication and honesty, much can be gained. "Ariah" is very different in this from other fantasy novels, which keep reproducing our problems and norms without really challenging much of it. "Ariah" takes a step further. Mixed families aren't well-received with silver elves – which is hypocritical as there are so many of them and nothing wrong about it either. Silver elves don't accept polyamorous relationships or families – and yet, the family of Ariah's mentor is a great example of how much good these can do. Most elves think in binary genders – and yet there are the gold elves who don't differentiate genders, who are one even though their bodies aren't all the same. Human bodies supposedly work one way or another according to their gender – the boundaries are much more fluid for all elves as male elves's bodies react to parenthood as well, they start lactating for example. With every new concept that challenged the usual – and my! – assumptions about how societies and bodies ought to work, my excitement grew.
"Ariah" is fantasy the way it should be – some of it comes from our (Western) society and is prolematised, but Sanders shows that things can be very different and keeps challenging readers to think differently, to change tracks. This is also the first time a fictional story felt so much like an autobiography to me. I would've liked a bit more thrill at times, and definitely some more explanations about the elves, but otherwise this books gets an unconditional recommendation.