Scan barcode
esskaysquared's review
challenging
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
I really did not like this book at all. The writing was very good, but I found the story confusing and hard to follow. I listened to the audiobook, and I couldn't tell if there were multiple narrators or what. I know that one reason I was so confused was that the book was just gross. I wasn't expecting body horror, but I can handle that. This was, of nothing else, more body horror than I could stand. Someone else said that the book was too vulgar and I thought, "I love swear words." It wasn't just swear words though (although there were a lot of swear words). The ideas were vulgar.
I also found the storytelling convoluted and confusing. There were definitely times when I was literally not able to follow the story because I was too distracted by some gross details about worms and stuff, but I also couldn't follow how this apocalyptic distopia came about in only twenty or so years. It was all very "somehow Palpatine survived" to me.
My sibling also tried to read this book around the same time I did, and they liked one of her earlier books. They couldn't make it even halfway through and said "it feels very MFA." I would agree with that.
Not only would I not recommend this book to people, I even told a friend not to read it.
I also found the storytelling convoluted and confusing. There were definitely times when I was literally not able to follow the story because I was too distracted by some gross details about worms and stuff, but I also couldn't follow how this apocalyptic distopia came about in only twenty or so years. It was all very "somehow Palpatine survived" to me.
My sibling also tried to read this book around the same time I did, and they liked one of her earlier books. They couldn't make it even halfway through and said "it feels very MFA." I would agree with that.
Not only would I not recommend this book to people, I even told a friend not to read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Gore, Self harm, Cursing, Acephobia/Arophobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Sexual violence, Transphobia, and War
readingelli's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
It was well written, and thought provoking, but I don’t think I liked it. Not really my cup of tea. Very body horror.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, War, Sexual content, and Body horror
Post apocalypse, discussion of genitalia, reproductive horror, climate horrorvanmeers's review against another edition
The Book of Joan is a story of how an environmental catastrophe forced the surviving (rich) humans to seek out life in space where they lose their reproductive organs (they, quite literally, shrivel up) and as they are now sex repressed must self-harm to produce written porn on their bodies.
There are several aspects of the book that I dislike but it is the authors outdated and offensive representation of gender that I dislike the most and find as the number one reason to not recommend this book. She describes a world where gender no longer exists, however, she makes it clear you can still tell when someone was a boy or a girl because of their shrivelled up genitalia. Additionally,the main villain, a man, is consistently shown as someone who mutilates women's bodies and performs 'genital reassignment surgery' on people who do not consent and in a final twist is revealed to be, in the author's words, a woman and the book then proceeds to describe him with female pronouns until he is killed off
There are several aspects of the book that I dislike but it is the authors outdated and offensive representation of gender that I dislike the most and find as the number one reason to not recommend this book. She describes a world where gender no longer exists, however, she makes it clear you can still tell when someone was a boy or a girl because of their shrivelled up genitalia. Additionally,
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Homophobia, Self harm, Sexual violence, and Transphobia
davyjones's review against another edition
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Don’t even know what to say because I did not like it. It sucked. The story barely had any footing, not even the Jeanne d'Arc "retelling" did, except for her birth place. There was so much pointlessness in half of the words, it was so unnecessarily vulgar sometimes, there was really no point to be made with the choice of words and on top of everything the very end was transphobic. Great. Well done. Round of applause.
1.5 stars because the second part looked like it was going to improve (which led me to falsely believe something good was coming up. Meep. It got worse than the first part.) plus the potential there was.
Like I guess I get it, it's a bit of a commentary on climate change, the pointlessness of war, we barely matter, love is important, we shouldn’t only and constantly look for and at leaders, etc. I get that. Sure. But it sucked anyway. There are better words for it and better stories.
And maybe, just maybe, I'm not iNteLLeCtuAL enough to see the brilliance of this book but if you can’t appeal or get through to less fortunate readers, what's your story really worth.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Infertility, Murder, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Cursing, Excrement, Kidnapping, Medical content, Rape, Slavery, and Transphobia
Minor: Alcohol
alylentz's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
Read for a grad school class and I understand how this fits into the conventions of science fiction, but I don't think it's of value. The arguments it's making in regards to gender are convoluted, reductive, and harmful, in my opinion, not to mention the fact that the ultimate villain who is flaying people alive and mutilating people turns out to be--surprise!--a trans man! . Also, this author's style gets praised for being so elevated but there were multiple examples of sentences or comparisons made that were so over the top I had to roll my eyes. I also don't think the narrative was well-crafted: it really lacks momentum and if I wasn't reading this for school I absolutely wouldn't not have finished it. But maybe I'm too stupid for it! I don't know.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Transphobia, Torture, Violence, Vomit, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexism, Rape, Racism, Physical abuse, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Body horror, and Blood
More...