Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine

1 review

caitlin_bookchats's review against another edition

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

I'm really torn about this book. It reminded me strongly of childhood favorite The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and I flew through, especially the portions set on the ship during the voyage to Mars, but reading it with the knowledge I have today I could not help but see it was built on a rotten foundation of colonialism.

I think the author intended to avoid some of the problems of British colonial rule while still enjoying the adventurous explorer atmosphere by setting the book on a fictional Mars with a fictional sentient Martian species, but it felt too much like a bad analogy for how indigenous American populations were treated by explorers.

I also don't know enough about British and Indian colonial history to know how to read the backstory of an Indian character but am cautious about how it was described.

YMMV but I am personally not willing to wade through two more books for Arabella to potentially discover that the Martians are not inferior to the British/ so-called "civilized" society. Which is a bummer because I did enjoy many aspects of this book.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

Arabella is forcefully outed as a woman in disguise as Captain's Boy at one point when she is stripped for punishment. Arabella's father dies near the beginning of the book and Arabella has a few injuries described. There's a scene with a battle between two ships and several characters are killed. The Martians are often described with disdain , slurs, and as inferior both by side characters and occasionally by Arabella or the Martians themselves. The Martians are sentient, but not human.