crystalisreading's review

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You can't call it an LGBTQ book in all seriousness, and then turn around and deadname your trans woman character within the first few pages of the book, and repeatedly quote poisonous TERF Rowling. You also can't expect me to finish your bigoted book, even if it was granted to me by #NetGalley and the publisher as a digital advanced copy. There's literally no one I would feel comfortable recommending this book to, and I am so disappointed, as I was pulled in by a cute cover, and was so excited to read a book that involves the confluence of queerness and geeky gaming--But this book is not it. 

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sara_m_martins's review

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TW/ deadname. 
Around page 15 a deadname for a trans character is included... I hope this is removed in the final version. 

Unfortunately this one was not for me.
I was intrigued by the premise, as someone who has never played D&D but has seen a few play-throughs and found those fun, and as someone who is queer.
I really enjoyed the descriptive writing style and also the way the story inside of a story was told. 
I found the tone clashed in the 1st half (sometimes YA sometimes New Adult); the book gets more solid in the 2nd half and i became more invested in the "real-life" plot then.
Other CW: homophobia, religious trauma, mental illness depiction, sexual & violent content.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Iowa University Press for an eARC

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melaniereadsbooks's review

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DNF at 15%

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the gifted review copy of this book.

I really wanted to love this book--Queer D&D sounded right up my alley! But I was immediately brought down by the blatant transphobia about 5 pages in, when the author decided to deadname a trans character for no apparent reason except to explain that they are trans? No. Uh uh. You do not do that. There was no purpose to this deadnaming at all except transphobia, whether intentional or not. I truly hope that line is removed from this book before the finished copy comes out.

The characters were also flat and uninteresting to me in the parts I read, and the weird emphasis on sex in all of the scenes and with the characters for no real reason felt... a little stereo-typy to me. I frankly find it unrealistic that this people who aren't even friends would be so blatantly talking about sex with each other, especially around someone brand new. It kinda felt like the hyper-sexual-queer stereotype in action.

I hope these issues with the representation are fixed before the final copy.


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