A review by kittyfoil
Medalon by Jennifer Fallon

2.0

DNF at 95%. Reading this was a painful drag. Part of the reason for that is that this is grimdark fantasy a.k.a high fantasy dystopia. This means that the happiest these characters will ever be is in the beginning, and they didn't even start out very happy. It is a real downer. Put simply as someone who reads romances for the happy endings this genre just isn't my cup of tea. Like there is nothing that can make me enjoy Game of Thrones. Also trigger warning for rape. I hate it when rape is used as a narrative device but more on that later. The other part is just poor pacing. I don't think that Jennifer Fallon is a bad writer. There is good characterization and dialogue, but plot is her weakness. Whenever she needs the plot to move she uses literal deus ex machina having the gods appear as characters to make the plot do things. Like, she just has the god of love make the two mains fall in love, something which could have happened organically. This book is over three-hundred pages there is time for a romantic subplot. I think this is an interesting concept. It is probably the one of the few books I have read where a matriarchal society is not viewed in a positive light. Women in power make the same mistakes men do, and are just a susceptible to corrupting power. The author clearly views taking power through unscrupulous means as a bad thing because characters are punished for doing this, most notably R'shiel who gets raped after inciting a rebellion that she doesn't really believe in. This is just a really long drawn out political drama. The government of Medalon are atheists, but because they are a much smaller country they are pressured by monotheists into persecuting the polytheists. The fact that they are atheists makes them look really silly especially since the gods are demonstrably real. The polytheists also look really silly for putting their faith in the gods because the gods aren't really interested in helping people, but in helping themselves. The Harshini are pacifists, but that means that they are really useless in the face of conflict, and have to use other people to do their dirty work for them. Being heroic and honorable in this world like Tarja is viewed as abjectly silly because it is easier to follow the system than to rebel against it when you think it is wrong, and everyone is in it for themselves. The people in power will do whatever they must to keep it, even at the expense of destroying the things they are supposed to protect. I feel like the fun of fiction for me is to imagine that the world can be better than what it is currently, which is why grimdark fiction just really gets me down.