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A review by whatsmichireading
Ballad For Jasmine Town by Molly Ringle
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
3.5
Ballad for Jasmine Town is the second in Ringle's Eidolonia series, I haven't read the first one but I wasn't lost while reading this one. Ringle does a good job of setting up the story and giving you all the details you need. It also appears to be mostly tangentially connected to Lava Red Feather Blue as opposed to a direct sequel.
There was a lot of this that I really liked. I found the building political tensions of the world interesting (and familiar) and I found the romance between Rafi and Roxana to be really sweet. I liked that neither of them were willing to immediately give up their lives in an insta-love sort of way and they had to work their way through challenges in order to build something together.
The thing that fell flat for me that influenced how i felt about the book as a whole was Rafi being trans and how that was written. I was so excited to see how Ringle approached this with a witch who could change their body at will. Unfortunately she just sort of didn't. There's brief passing comments about it once or twice so that you know Rafi is trans, but it isn't fleshed out or real in any way. I feel like it should have been an intrinsic part of who Rafi was and how he moved through the world but it sort of ended up feeling like it was a throw away characteristic for the sake of having a trans character to say exists. With so much time spent in Rafi's internal life in the book I felt like we should have seen more of it. I'd love to hear from trans readers about their experience reading this.
Thank you to Netgalley and Central Avenue for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review
There was a lot of this that I really liked. I found the building political tensions of the world interesting (and familiar) and I found the romance between Rafi and Roxana to be really sweet. I liked that neither of them were willing to immediately give up their lives in an insta-love sort of way and they had to work their way through challenges in order to build something together.
The thing that fell flat for me that influenced how i felt about the book as a whole was Rafi being trans and how that was written. I was so excited to see how Ringle approached this with a witch who could change their body at will. Unfortunately she just sort of didn't. There's brief passing comments about it once or twice so that you know Rafi is trans, but it isn't fleshed out or real in any way. I feel like it should have been an intrinsic part of who Rafi was and how he moved through the world but it sort of ended up feeling like it was a throw away characteristic for the sake of having a trans character to say exists. With so much time spent in Rafi's internal life in the book I felt like we should have seen more of it. I'd love to hear from trans readers about their experience reading this.
Thank you to Netgalley and Central Avenue for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review