Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Her Majesty's Royal Coven

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

42 reviews

cumminsn's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

It is honestly sort of difficult to put into words my exact feelings on this book. Parts of it I liked quite a bit, while others had me physically rolling my eyes. The magic is very fun, and the lore of witches and how they connect to the earth and to each other I found compelling and interesting. But, once the conflict of the story started to come to a head, I found myself enjoying the book less and less. The villains almost become… cartoonish, in a way? It felt like the author was really trying to push home how terrible the antagonist is by just repeatedly having her state her transphobic viewpoints to the point where it was very irritating and tiresome even for me, a cisgender woman.

While there is very positive transgender, and LGBT in general, representation here, there is also rampant transphobia that I could see being very triggering to some. Also, the overuse of swearing and pop culture references took away from my immersion as well. For a book that has different characters that it switches perspectives between, I sometimes found myself having a hard time remembering who was who, with no very large differences in tone from one character to the next. Other than the antagonist, of course. The fact that she was evil was about the most obvious thing in the whole book.

I guess what disappointed me is that there wasn’t quite enough Fantasy to balance out the in-your-face politics that were constantly surfacing. I was more interested in the lore of the world, but the story seemed to stumble over itself to try and include as much political-correctness as possible that some of the characters didn’t even feel like genuine characters and more like just stereotypes being included for the sake of it, which was sad to read. Some of the language used, particularly internet-type wording and references, will likely not age well either.

I forced myself to finish this one. I was invested enough to want to do it, but I don’t know that I’ll be reaching for the sequel right away, if it all. In the end, I felt underwhelmed.

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sfdogmom's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

5.0

fantastic book. Very well written.

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janeywaneyb's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

1.5

Hmmm....you can't like every book you read. The story is good but the characters...jeez! These characters are insufferable, they spend most of the book harping on about their own woeful problems which I found so hard to care about.
I think there is meant to be a feminist liberal feel to this book but it comes across as preachy and almost uneducated like reading the lefty version of the Daily Mail. I get what the author is trying to do and there is a good try at discussing the social issues especially around transphobia, which is handled well, but having so many issues trying to have space in a book made it clunky and awkward.
There are paragraphs of moaning self-reflection from every character as they obsess over then men in their lives, their childhoods and the "greater good". The references to the 90's pop culture also wears thin. I stuck with it as the actual story was good and when they start being kick-ass witches I was all for it. I don't think I'll be heading for the next book any time soon.

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scrubsandbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense 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

4.5

This was one hell of a ride but one I immensely enjoyed: queer witches, powerful women, politics mixed with magic and amazing world-building. Theo was easily my favorite character from the get-go and I enjoyed the TERFs getting their asses handed to them in a way that I wish we could see this same fate for these kinds of people in the real world.

With the topic being transphobia, this book may not be for everyone. I know for a fact that TERFs and their supporters would hate it, but generally speaking, the transphobia is heavy handed and I had to take some breaks in between to punch a pillow and have some cookies and soothing music before I went back into it. I was thoroughly invested though and know I will complete the entire trilogy the moment it all comes out.

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vgk's review

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2.0

Well, I finished it, but I won't be reading anything more by this author. I could probably write a thousand words or more about what is wrong with this book, but to be honest it's not worth my time. I suppose the biggest problem I had was the characterisation, which was at best two dimensional (more often one). Reminiscent of NK Jemisin's dreadful The City We Became in this regard, the characters are poorly drawn and stereotypical. The author's viewpoint was like that of a 14yo boy who has read a bunch of teen girl magazines and listened to Spice Girls lyrics and thinks they now know about women. The result is unrealistic, juvenile and cringeworthy characters. And I can't even begin to describe how bad the POC and lesbian characters are. The whole thing reads like YA but with decidedly adult content. Dreadful.

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blacksphinx's review against another edition

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tense medium-paced

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

2.0

On one hand, I feel like the main message of this book is important and I'm glad its been so successful. But I bounced off of the extremely causal prose hard, and it was difficult to read so much misogyny directed at women by other women (please stop calling each other cunts holy shit!)

(I am also very tired of books that go "covid happened but we used magic to make it go away" ugh! And blaming the anti-vax movement on warlocks is so distasteful.)

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