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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
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
Note to me: at first I gave it a 3.5, but I truly think it's a 3 (1/8/24)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder
Minor: Misogyny, Rape
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I tried so hard to finish this book because the blurb was so interesting and I really loved the idea the author had of an immersive read with candles smelling of the main characters, menus of the meals served, and playlists. Unfortunately, everything I learned on the back cover took about 200 pages to unfold. The author was extremely wordy, rephrasing a single metaphor at least four times in each paragraph and my god, so many typos and grammatical errors. Even in the edited version. Usually that’s a quick DNF for me just because of how annoying and sloppy I find it but I pushed through. I’d love to say the amount of pages in this book is due to the world building or character development but I’d be lying. The main characters seem to just share a personality with no real distinction between the two and it’s really no personality at all. Nox seems to be obsessed with Amaris out of the blue. There’s no lead up or anything and though we’re being shown their experiences at the orphanage, not once does it come off as anything but an overprotective sister and her younger sibling. Amaris leaves the orphanage to join a group of “assassins” which should be exciting but nothing happens. We’re to believe Amaris is apparently in love with Nox but Amaris has more chemistry with Ash than anything and it’s like she completely forgets Nox exists until she’s thinking about sleeping with Ash. The same convoluted metaphors are used throughout the book like locking feelings in a box and shoving it deep, deep down but it’s every time ANYTHING even a minor inconvenience happens. It’s enough to hear it from one point of view but we’re getting this godforsaken metaphor from both POV. It was a good one the first 10 times but come on. All the words in the world and you’re stuck on these. I was seeing some reviews mention racist tropes and was confused until I realized Nox is supposed to be a black character. Seems obvious now that her name means night but golden skin and tanned skin just doesn’t seem to convey that to me. So said character is basically a servant to the head Matron of the orphanage and a protector of the very white girl. She even takes a public whipping for Amaris which was completely uncalled for. Nox then becomes a sex worker feeding into hypersexualizing black women. She’s constantly talking about how men disgust her but she actually seems to really enjoy sex with them??? Meanwhile, Amaris is the “goddess blessed” (or whatever) pure, white virgin. To add insult to injury, we later find out Nox is actually part demon. Though it may not be intentional racism, they are distasteful tropes that make a boring story sour. I kept waiting for something to happen but there seems to be no real plot aside from Nox wanting to find Amaris. I don’t think we need 528 pages of this. DNF around 70%. Was going to try to push through and at least start the second book but no thank you. I cannot.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Okay okay so the plot is completely incoherent. The characters often act very stupidly, believing obvious lies from their enemies, accusing a monarch of something in their own palace, and amassing troops for more than a decade for … a rescue mission of a single person? The book is also quite slow as the author seems to be afraid of dialogue, as individual lines will be separated by paragraphs of description. Amaris is exceedingly stupid, her gift doesn’t make sense, and she’s overall kind of insufferable. Nox is much more interesting and likable in my opinion.
With that out of the way, if you can give this book grace and meet it where it’s at, you’ll have a good time. The characters’ relationships are generally well written and a lot of the events are engaging. Of course you’re encouraged to read by the hope that the two characters will be reunited. I gave it grace because I was interested by the promise of lesbian romance. Don’t try too hard to understand the plot because you won’t be rewarded for that, but enjoy the settings and events and characters!
With that out of the way, if you can give this book grace and meet it where it’s at, you’ll have a good time. The characters’ relationships are generally well written and a lot of the events are engaging. Of course you’re encouraged to read by the hope that the two characters will be reunited. I gave it grace because I was interested by the promise of lesbian romance. Don’t try too hard to understand the plot because you won’t be rewarded for that, but enjoy the settings and events and characters!
Not a fan.
I am giving this book one star for the premise, half a star for the cover, and half a star for (some of!) the imagery. Honestly, I was torn between a 2 or 3 star rating, but when I finished the book, I was mostly just glad it was over and mad that (according to Libby) I had spent 19 hours of my life on this book.
Overall, this book was just poorly written. It is painfully obvious that this author wrote this book quickly and was too in love with every single word she wrote to do any editing. I try to go into book club books blind, but by 25% I had to read the summary for the book, as it felt like nothing was happening. By 50%, I was reading other reviews and wondering if I was going crazy - how did this book have such a high GR rating when it's just objectively bad? That was when I started learning about the plagiarism and cyberbullying scandals Piper and this book had been involved in - I tried not to let this information color my perception of the story, but it may have bled into my opinion as my dislike for the book slowly morphed into outright annoyance and frustration.
First, the characters: we have Amaris, the bisexual manic-pixie-dream-girl suffering from 2012-Tumblr-era Alexandria's Genesis who is angry all the time, and Nox, who is very sexy and smells like plums and loves Amaris. She has no other personality traits, but why would your other main character (who, coincidentally, is one of the few confirmed women of color in the book) need to have any depth beyond a mindless devotion to super-special-white Amaris?
The narration in the book switches between Amaris and Nox, and occasionally throws in a few other side characters' POV. It's hard to tell who is narrating, as no one has a distinct voice. All the characters talk in the same overwrought style that permeates the entire novel. When the novel opens, the POV character is a 3-year old Nox, who is identical to adolescent and teenage and adult Nox in her internal monologue. Amaris has the dubious distinction of being more annoyed and caustic in her narrative voice - Nox rarely has a charitable thought to think about anyone around her as well, but Amaris tends to be more openly antagonistic.
I think Nox's character was, overall, handled very poorly and could have used a sensitivity reader. There's something very off-putting about the constant contrast between Nox's darkness and Amaris' whiteness in light of how the characters are treated. Nox, a woman of color, is beat in place of Amaris, because keeping Amaris (and her snow-white skin) unmarred is more important to the matrons at the orphanage than protecting Nox is. Nox is also sold off as a sex slave in Amaris' place and spends the next 3 years being raped to advance the political machinations of the brothel owner, Madame Millicent. Nox is relentlessly sexualized, as it is revealed later that she is actually a succubus that is able to drain men's souls by having sex with them. This power somehow doesn't apply to women; rather, women tend to feel compelled to favor Nox (Millicent and the Gray Matron). It is unclear to the reader if Nox's succubus nature impacts the way Amaris and Emily (Nox's brutally mistreated fuck-buddy) feel about her. Nox has no friends besides Emily, and their relationship really strains the definition of friendship - it is patently obvious that Nox doesn't care about Emily at all. Nox is consumed with a single-minded obsession to rescue Amaris from her perceived kidnappers that she focuses no time or attention on anything else, including improving her own circumstances of being held against her will by a woman who directly caused the separation between Amaris and Nox. Piper tries to convince us that while Nox doesn't like or trust Millicent, she needs to work with her in order to amass enough power to eventually find and rescue Amaris. Personally, I don't see why Nox couldn't try to free herself and work alone. The fact that she is perfectly content to let Millicent keep her imprisoned again speaks to Nox's entire life revolving around Amaris. Nox's "profession" (air-quoted because she was essentially sex-trafficked) also seems to have been written in super poor taste. I think I saw another reviewer mention that Piper confirmed Amaris and Nox are both bisexual, but going solely on the text, Nox reads as a lesbian - she refers multiple times to her dislike of men, and she mentions that she would never have discovered her powers (i.e. had sex with a man) if she hadn't been sold to Millicent's brothel. Thus, it's pretty awful that the only character ever described (in graphic detail) having sex with men is the only one who has no attraction to them. She also mentions the process of draining the soul from men in terms similar to orgasming which, again...to write a woman as simultaneously feeling no desire for men while still enjoying sex with them just screams corrective rape. But maybe that's just me.
In contrast, Amaris, whose fair appearance is relentlessly commented on, finds love and acceptance, family and fulfillment, in her new life without Nox. Beyond an uncomfortable sex dream (and I'll touch on why the Nox-Amaris relationship did not work AT ALL for me later) and the occasional mention that dark eyes or dark skin reminds her of Nox, Amaris does not think about Nox. She doesn't wonder what became of Nox after the orphanage, she doesn't ever make plans to try to find Nox, and she seems able to move on from their relationship fairly easily; she makes many new friends and even feels attraction and desire for her brother-in-arms Ash. In contrast, though Nox engages in a sexual relationship with Emily, the novel frequently reminds the reader (and Nox reminds Emily) that Nox only has true, pure feelings for Amaris, that she's fantasizing about Amaris whenever she is with Emily, and Emily is little more than a poor substitute for Amaris. I should remind you that Nox, while fantasizing about having sex with Amaris, is 21 years old and has not seen Amaris since she was 15 and just starting puberty. Yikes.
Amaris' attitude annoyed me. As I mentioned earlier, the chapters she narrated were more often filled with disparaging remarks for the people around her. She was often very sarcastic to everyone she spoke to. When it's made apparent that the Raascot fae are hurt and offended by being called "dark fae" - and they imply this is an incredibly prejudicial and ignorant term to use - Amaris continues to address Gadrial and his cohorts as dark fae or demons as a bit. Slurs are funny, I guess. Amaris also possesses the ability to give people orders they are not able to resist. At first, she seems stunned and horrified by this ability, and she realizes that Nox likely wasn't able to leave the orphanage because Amaris forced Nox with her ability to wait for Amaris. She seems to move on from this guilt fairly quickly (it's literally never mentioned again). When called on to use her powers again to save the Raascot fae from Ash and Malik, she again feels sickened by her violation of their consent...but a few chapters later, she freely uses her powers to avoid wearing a dress and chalks it up to her bad mood. She seemingly got over any moral qualms about overriding someone's will as soon as it became convenient for her to do so. Despite her comfort in using her powers, she still almost gets herself and her friends killed because she didn't think to use her powers against any other person when it became obvious the queen was immune to her. She says she didn't think of it, so it's not fair that Ash is angry with her, but it was also super obvious to me as a reader that that should have been the next course of action. Then, when she is dragged out into the arena to fight Gadrial, she AGAIN fails to use her powers to escape. Clown behavior, indeed.
The relationship between Nox and Amaris - the supposed core of this novel - just did not work for me. As I mentioned earlier, the tone of Nox's narration remains constant from childhood into adulthood. This makes the switch from Nox's protective, sisterly feelings to romantic interest jarring and off-putting. Before their separation, there is little build-up, beyond one botched love confession, that implies these romantic feelings are well-established or reciprocated. The fact that Nox then dedicates her ENTIRE life, foreswearing all other relationships, interests, hobbies, or future plans, to finding Amaris just seems...kind of unbelievable and possibly a little stupid. Especially considering, again, that Amaris almost never thinks of Nox and is able to move on and have a perfectly normal life without her.
My last beef is with the writing. Truly, it just felt very amateur. Piper has bragged about writing this book in 6 days, and she originally self-published without an accredited editor, and I think that is painfully obvious in the prose. Piper was obviously trying to mimic the grand, sweeping lyrical descriptions commonly found in fantasy, and she succeeded less than half of the time. Whenever she did stumble into a genuinely lovely and evocative description, it was ruined almost immediately; she frequently repeated descriptive phrases word-for-word a couple of paragraphs later, or she used three more flowery sentences to restate the same idea over and over. I felt the world-building was inconsistent - even though the (only?) recognized deity in this world was a goddess, it seemed to have no impact on the patriarchal societal system. We also only ever see male bishops interacting with the common people, while the supposedly more important priestesses are sequestered away in temples where only women may enter, but who in a religious system has more power - the people interacting with and teaching the congregation, or the people that are never seen or heard? Piper also claims, through Nox's narration (and more explicitly in her author's note) that this world exists free from homophobia and that casual sex and sex workers are respected instead of taboo. She shows this by...having men fetishize lesbian relationships, putting an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on the virginity/purity of women, and showing the only "sex workers" as trafficked orphans (who have only JUST HIT PUBERTY - that's an average age range of 8-13, btw) who are abused and killed by the brothel owner. One small inconsistency that I found especially grating, despite its insignificance, was Amaris' hair. Piper used "white" and "silver" interchangeably to describe it when...those are two different colors. As someone who has bleached her hair white before, silver hair is very different and distinct from white hair. There were also just several instances of the completely wrong word being used in sentences (emit vs omit, yield vs wield) which, again, just proves that this book needed an actual editor. There were also some jarring anachronisms included in the book; I know everyone is dragging Piper for including the TikTok-ified phrase "clout chaser," but the most egregious one for me was "loose lips sink ships," a very famous WWII propaganda slogan that I would argue is not even commonly used enough to be divorced from its very real-world origin.
The pacing was all over the place; the beginning dragged on so slowly that, as I mentioned at the beginning of the review, I had to "spoil" myself a little bit by reading the summary because the first quarter of the book held nothing interesting or resembling a plot. Meanwhile, we skip through much of Amaris' three-year training at the reev, and we time-jump completely over Nox's three years at the brothel (though this is later slightly expanded upon through flashbacks). The story continues to bumble along through random diversions (what the orb mentioned by the priestess at the All-Mother's temple had to do with literally anything, I couldn't tell you), before rapidly sealing up as many plot points as possible in order to set up the next book in the series.
Overall, I don't think Piper is entirely without talent - I think this project was too big in scope for her, and she needs to learn the value in killing her darlings, as the phrase goes. A harsher editor, clean and coherent world-building, and more time spent writing would certainly benefit her. As for me, I most definitely will not be continuing on with this series.
I am giving this book one star for the premise, half a star for the cover, and half a star for (some of!) the imagery. Honestly, I was torn between a 2 or 3 star rating, but when I finished the book, I was mostly just glad it was over and mad that (according to Libby) I had spent 19 hours of my life on this book.
Overall, this book was just poorly written. It is painfully obvious that this author wrote this book quickly and was too in love with every single word she wrote to do any editing. I try to go into book club books blind, but by 25% I had to read the summary for the book, as it felt like nothing was happening. By 50%, I was reading other reviews and wondering if I was going crazy - how did this book have such a high GR rating when it's just objectively bad? That was when I started learning about the plagiarism and cyberbullying scandals Piper and this book had been involved in - I tried not to let this information color my perception of the story, but it may have bled into my opinion as my dislike for the book slowly morphed into outright annoyance and frustration.
First, the characters: we have Amaris, the bisexual manic-pixie-dream-girl suffering from 2012-Tumblr-era Alexandria's Genesis who is angry all the time, and Nox, who is very sexy and smells like plums and loves Amaris. She has no other personality traits, but why would your other main character (who, coincidentally, is one of the few confirmed women of color in the book) need to have any depth beyond a mindless devotion to super-special-white Amaris?
The narration in the book switches between Amaris and Nox, and occasionally throws in a few other side characters' POV. It's hard to tell who is narrating, as no one has a distinct voice. All the characters talk in the same overwrought style that permeates the entire novel. When the novel opens, the POV character is a 3-year old Nox, who is identical to adolescent and teenage and adult Nox in her internal monologue. Amaris has the dubious distinction of being more annoyed and caustic in her narrative voice - Nox rarely has a charitable thought to think about anyone around her as well, but Amaris tends to be more openly antagonistic.
I think Nox's character was, overall, handled very poorly and could have used a sensitivity reader. There's something very off-putting about the constant contrast between Nox's darkness and Amaris' whiteness in light of how the characters are treated. Nox, a woman of color, is beat in place of Amaris, because keeping Amaris (and her snow-white skin) unmarred is more important to the matrons at the orphanage than protecting Nox is. Nox is also sold off as a sex slave in Amaris' place and spends the next 3 years being raped to advance the political machinations of the brothel owner, Madame Millicent. Nox is relentlessly sexualized, as it is revealed later that she is actually a succubus that is able to drain men's souls by having sex with them. This power somehow doesn't apply to women; rather, women tend to feel compelled to favor Nox (Millicent and the Gray Matron). It is unclear to the reader if Nox's succubus nature impacts the way Amaris and Emily (Nox's brutally mistreated fuck-buddy) feel about her. Nox has no friends besides Emily, and their relationship really strains the definition of friendship - it is patently obvious that Nox doesn't care about Emily at all. Nox is consumed with a single-minded obsession to rescue Amaris from her perceived kidnappers that she focuses no time or attention on anything else, including improving her own circumstances of being held against her will by a woman who directly caused the separation between Amaris and Nox. Piper tries to convince us that while Nox doesn't like or trust Millicent, she needs to work with her in order to amass enough power to eventually find and rescue Amaris. Personally, I don't see why Nox couldn't try to free herself and work alone. The fact that she is perfectly content to let Millicent keep her imprisoned again speaks to Nox's entire life revolving around Amaris. Nox's "profession" (air-quoted because she was essentially sex-trafficked) also seems to have been written in super poor taste. I think I saw another reviewer mention that Piper confirmed Amaris and Nox are both bisexual, but going solely on the text, Nox reads as a lesbian - she refers multiple times to her dislike of men, and she mentions that she would never have discovered her powers (i.e. had sex with a man) if she hadn't been sold to Millicent's brothel. Thus, it's pretty awful that the only character ever described (in graphic detail) having sex with men is the only one who has no attraction to them. She also mentions the process of draining the soul from men in terms similar to orgasming which, again...to write a woman as simultaneously feeling no desire for men while still enjoying sex with them just screams corrective rape. But maybe that's just me.
In contrast, Amaris, whose fair appearance is relentlessly commented on, finds love and acceptance, family and fulfillment, in her new life without Nox. Beyond an uncomfortable sex dream (and I'll touch on why the Nox-Amaris relationship did not work AT ALL for me later) and the occasional mention that dark eyes or dark skin reminds her of Nox, Amaris does not think about Nox. She doesn't wonder what became of Nox after the orphanage, she doesn't ever make plans to try to find Nox, and she seems able to move on from their relationship fairly easily; she makes many new friends and even feels attraction and desire for her brother-in-arms Ash. In contrast, though Nox engages in a sexual relationship with Emily, the novel frequently reminds the reader (and Nox reminds Emily) that Nox only has true, pure feelings for Amaris, that she's fantasizing about Amaris whenever she is with Emily, and Emily is little more than a poor substitute for Amaris. I should remind you that Nox, while fantasizing about having sex with Amaris, is 21 years old and has not seen Amaris since she was 15 and just starting puberty. Yikes.
Amaris' attitude annoyed me. As I mentioned earlier, the chapters she narrated were more often filled with disparaging remarks for the people around her. She was often very sarcastic to everyone she spoke to. When it's made apparent that the Raascot fae are hurt and offended by being called "dark fae" - and they imply this is an incredibly prejudicial and ignorant term to use - Amaris continues to address Gadrial and his cohorts as dark fae or demons as a bit. Slurs are funny, I guess. Amaris also possesses the ability to give people orders they are not able to resist. At first, she seems stunned and horrified by this ability, and she realizes that Nox likely wasn't able to leave the orphanage because Amaris forced Nox with her ability to wait for Amaris. She seems to move on from this guilt fairly quickly (it's literally never mentioned again). When called on to use her powers again to save the Raascot fae from Ash and Malik, she again feels sickened by her violation of their consent...but a few chapters later, she freely uses her powers to avoid wearing a dress and chalks it up to her bad mood. She seemingly got over any moral qualms about overriding someone's will as soon as it became convenient for her to do so. Despite her comfort in using her powers, she still almost gets herself and her friends killed because she didn't think to use her powers against any other person when it became obvious the queen was immune to her. She says she didn't think of it, so it's not fair that Ash is angry with her, but it was also super obvious to me as a reader that that should have been the next course of action. Then, when she is dragged out into the arena to fight Gadrial, she AGAIN fails to use her powers to escape. Clown behavior, indeed.
The relationship between Nox and Amaris - the supposed core of this novel - just did not work for me. As I mentioned earlier, the tone of Nox's narration remains constant from childhood into adulthood. This makes the switch from Nox's protective, sisterly feelings to romantic interest jarring and off-putting. Before their separation, there is little build-up, beyond one botched love confession, that implies these romantic feelings are well-established or reciprocated. The fact that Nox then dedicates her ENTIRE life, foreswearing all other relationships, interests, hobbies, or future plans, to finding Amaris just seems...kind of unbelievable and possibly a little stupid. Especially considering, again, that Amaris almost never thinks of Nox and is able to move on and have a perfectly normal life without her.
My last beef is with the writing. Truly, it just felt very amateur. Piper has bragged about writing this book in 6 days, and she originally self-published without an accredited editor, and I think that is painfully obvious in the prose. Piper was obviously trying to mimic the grand, sweeping lyrical descriptions commonly found in fantasy, and she succeeded less than half of the time. Whenever she did stumble into a genuinely lovely and evocative description, it was ruined almost immediately; she frequently repeated descriptive phrases word-for-word a couple of paragraphs later, or she used three more flowery sentences to restate the same idea over and over. I felt the world-building was inconsistent - even though the (only?) recognized deity in this world was a goddess, it seemed to have no impact on the patriarchal societal system. We also only ever see male bishops interacting with the common people, while the supposedly more important priestesses are sequestered away in temples where only women may enter, but who in a religious system has more power - the people interacting with and teaching the congregation, or the people that are never seen or heard? Piper also claims, through Nox's narration (and more explicitly in her author's note) that this world exists free from homophobia and that casual sex and sex workers are respected instead of taboo. She shows this by...having men fetishize lesbian relationships, putting an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on the virginity/purity of women, and showing the only "sex workers" as trafficked orphans (who have only JUST HIT PUBERTY - that's an average age range of 8-13, btw) who are abused and killed by the brothel owner. One small inconsistency that I found especially grating, despite its insignificance, was Amaris' hair. Piper used "white" and "silver" interchangeably to describe it when...those are two different colors. As someone who has bleached her hair white before, silver hair is very different and distinct from white hair. There were also just several instances of the completely wrong word being used in sentences (emit vs omit, yield vs wield) which, again, just proves that this book needed an actual editor. There were also some jarring anachronisms included in the book; I know everyone is dragging Piper for including the TikTok-ified phrase "clout chaser," but the most egregious one for me was "loose lips sink ships," a very famous WWII propaganda slogan that I would argue is not even commonly used enough to be divorced from its very real-world origin.
The pacing was all over the place; the beginning dragged on so slowly that, as I mentioned at the beginning of the review, I had to "spoil" myself a little bit by reading the summary because the first quarter of the book held nothing interesting or resembling a plot. Meanwhile, we skip through much of Amaris' three-year training at the reev, and we time-jump completely over Nox's three years at the brothel (though this is later slightly expanded upon through flashbacks). The story continues to bumble along through random diversions (what the orb mentioned by the priestess at the All-Mother's temple had to do with literally anything, I couldn't tell you), before rapidly sealing up as many plot points as possible in order to set up the next book in the series.
Overall, I don't think Piper is entirely without talent - I think this project was too big in scope for her, and she needs to learn the value in killing her darlings, as the phrase goes. A harsher editor, clean and coherent world-building, and more time spent writing would certainly benefit her. As for me, I most definitely will not be continuing on with this series.
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:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
DNF @ 50%
I really wanted to like this but it’s such a chore. The feminist themes(and honestly the book in general) are always tell don’t show and you can really tell it’s written by a cis woman. The themes fall flat when you actually pick at them and with Nox in particular they often mirror racist tropes about black women.
The lowlights for me were:
- calling periods the “curse of womanhood”
- “hard thick rod of serotonin” is one of the worst things I’ve had the displeasure of reading.
- saying the women working in the brothel were empowered when they were literally sold into sex slavery, this view was not challenged in what I read
- the graphic depiction of a black girl getting whipped for really just no reason at all
- Giving the lesbian character who was sold to a brothel a sex scene with a man that by all accounts is smut and seen as something enjoyable for her. I know this is marketed as a bi fantasy but Nox is literally described as having no taste for men so wtaf was that.
I really wanted to like this but it’s such a chore. The feminist themes(and honestly the book in general) are always tell don’t show and you can really tell it’s written by a cis woman. The themes fall flat when you actually pick at them and with Nox in particular they often mirror racist tropes about black women.
The lowlights for me were:
- calling periods the “curse of womanhood”
- “hard thick rod of serotonin” is one of the worst things I’ve had the displeasure of reading.
- saying the women working in the brothel were empowered when they were literally sold into sex slavery, this view was not challenged in what I read
- the graphic depiction of a black girl getting whipped for really just no reason at all
- Giving the lesbian character who was sold to a brothel a sex scene with a man that by all accounts is smut and seen as something enjoyable for her. I know this is marketed as a bi fantasy but Nox is literally described as having no taste for men so wtaf was that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Lesbophobia
The first 2 content warnings are because of how the author wrote it and not the actual content of the text.