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A review by beforeviolets
Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova
Foul Days is the first installment in a new fast-paced urban fantasy duology inspired by Bulgarian folklore, and marketed for fans of Naomi Novik.
I generally enjoyed this book, its premise, and world-building, but unfortunately wasn’t able to get over some glaring structural issues with the writing and the cop love interest.
Let’s break it down a bit.
The things I enjoyed:
The world-building. Slavic folklore is always a hit for me in fantasy stories and I loved the dark urban twist. The world feels lived in, and each magical element and each structural choice wonderfully impacts the characters’ experiences and perspectives. Besides the main monsters of the world, there are wonderful small sprinklings of folklore and superstition utilized throughout the story that really flesh out the world. (I love the superstitious folkloric history of immurement! And I love it in fantasy stories!)
The commentary. The two contrasting lands and societies is by far the element of the story that gets the most impactful mileage. It offers a stage for this story to discuss a lot of issues between class and privilege in our world, and to do so well. I loved the way we saw–manifested in a literal sense–the way that privileged folks unleash all the world’s horrors and struggles onto marginalized and underprivileged individuals and then shove it behind a wall so that they don’t have to confront the harm caused to those people. The way that marginalized and underprivileged people then have to completely adjust their lives and cultures to coexist with these horrors and demons, while the upper class and privileged then take those cultural touchstones and turn them into commodifications and aesthetics to don and discard as they please. In a day and age where we see a lot of rich kids cosplaying as poor, or likenesses and dialects of marginalized communities becoming fashion trends, this was incredibly poignant and was probably the highlight of the book.
The depictions of trauma. There’s a few elements of trauma depicted in this story. Some of it being a survivor’s guilt type of trauma, and another being from an abusive relationship. I thought these arcs were really well done and really loved the extra layer of weight and growth it added to the characters’ arcs.
The things I didn’t like:
The approach to this fast-paced structure. In a fast-paced story, it is crucial to keep your audience on their toes and to keep them invested in the stakes of the story, both large and small. But especially across the first half of this book, nothing is given time to land before its wielded for subversion or plot use. The story sets up a piece of information–and always through telling, never showing–and then within the next two chapters, the payoff of that planted seed is immediately carried out. It caused me as a reader to overly anticipate the subversion of any new element or information. I lost faith and engagement in the story because any newly introduced piece of information, character, object, or backstory element would be incredibly short-lived and immediately utilized for the following plot point, so I had nothing substantial to really hold on to. Especially with everything being told instead of shown, I had a hard time believing or putting weight to any element. This does get a lot better by the end, but this issue permeates the whole first half of the book.
The cop love interest. There is absolutely no reason for him to be a cop. He could just as easily be a spy or a private investigator hired out by the police, or something of the like. And this book… seems to be aware that cops are bad? The main character constantly says she didn’t trust him because he's a cop and that good cops are myths. But no matter how many times you have your main character say cops are bad, having a love interest be a “good guy” cop, whose police experience canonically taught him to see magical beings as real people instead of creatures, and who thinks of his police station as his home, and refuses to be a “corrupt cop” still gives this story a “Not All Cops Are Bad, Actually” stance. And I could not read about him read about him breaking through the “barricade” (yes, the actual word used) of pillows on their tropey-one-bed so that the characters wake in each other’s arms without associating it with the police–that I saw with my own eyes, just DAYS ago–breaking through a barricade made of literal human bodies to brutalize hundreds of students for peacefully protesting. This character being a cop is also incredibly antithetical to this book's messaging about the criminalization and forced poverty of the lower class. There’s some other spoiler-y stuff I won’t mention that makes me extra hate this guy, but I really didn’t understand this choice. There wouldn’t have had to be so much page space wasted railing against the police (to no avail) if he had just NOT BEEN A COP.
Overall, I was hooked enough by the premise, the characters, and world-building to read through the whole book, and I’m glad I did, but I was put off enough by the writing issues and the cop love interest that I’m certain I will not be continuing with this series.
CW: classism, abusive relationship (past), adult/minor relationship, trauma, grief, murder, blood, dead body, gun violence, sibling death (past), gambling, fire, medical content, death of loved one (past), emesis, alcohol, hospitalization, death of parents (past), car accident (past)
Thank you to the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
I generally enjoyed this book, its premise, and world-building, but unfortunately wasn’t able to get over some glaring structural issues with the writing and the cop love interest.
Let’s break it down a bit.
The things I enjoyed:
The world-building. Slavic folklore is always a hit for me in fantasy stories and I loved the dark urban twist. The world feels lived in, and each magical element and each structural choice wonderfully impacts the characters’ experiences and perspectives. Besides the main monsters of the world, there are wonderful small sprinklings of folklore and superstition utilized throughout the story that really flesh out the world. (I love the superstitious folkloric history of immurement! And I love it in fantasy stories!)
The commentary. The two contrasting lands and societies is by far the element of the story that gets the most impactful mileage. It offers a stage for this story to discuss a lot of issues between class and privilege in our world, and to do so well. I loved the way we saw–manifested in a literal sense–the way that privileged folks unleash all the world’s horrors and struggles onto marginalized and underprivileged individuals and then shove it behind a wall so that they don’t have to confront the harm caused to those people. The way that marginalized and underprivileged people then have to completely adjust their lives and cultures to coexist with these horrors and demons, while the upper class and privileged then take those cultural touchstones and turn them into commodifications and aesthetics to don and discard as they please. In a day and age where we see a lot of rich kids cosplaying as poor, or likenesses and dialects of marginalized communities becoming fashion trends, this was incredibly poignant and was probably the highlight of the book.
The depictions of trauma. There’s a few elements of trauma depicted in this story. Some of it being a survivor’s guilt type of trauma, and another being from an abusive relationship. I thought these arcs were really well done and really loved the extra layer of weight and growth it added to the characters’ arcs.
The things I didn’t like:
The approach to this fast-paced structure. In a fast-paced story, it is crucial to keep your audience on their toes and to keep them invested in the stakes of the story, both large and small. But especially across the first half of this book, nothing is given time to land before its wielded for subversion or plot use. The story sets up a piece of information–and always through telling, never showing–and then within the next two chapters, the payoff of that planted seed is immediately carried out. It caused me as a reader to overly anticipate the subversion of any new element or information. I lost faith and engagement in the story because any newly introduced piece of information, character, object, or backstory element would be incredibly short-lived and immediately utilized for the following plot point, so I had nothing substantial to really hold on to. Especially with everything being told instead of shown, I had a hard time believing or putting weight to any element. This does get a lot better by the end, but this issue permeates the whole first half of the book.
The cop love interest. There is absolutely no reason for him to be a cop. He could just as easily be a spy or a private investigator hired out by the police, or something of the like. And this book… seems to be aware that cops are bad? The main character constantly says she didn’t trust him because he's a cop and that good cops are myths. But no matter how many times you have your main character say cops are bad, having a love interest be a “good guy” cop, whose police experience canonically taught him to see magical beings as real people instead of creatures, and who thinks of his police station as his home, and refuses to be a “corrupt cop” still gives this story a “Not All Cops Are Bad, Actually” stance. And I could not read about him read about him breaking through the “barricade” (yes, the actual word used) of pillows on their tropey-one-bed so that the characters wake in each other’s arms without associating it with the police–that I saw with my own eyes, just DAYS ago–breaking through a barricade made of literal human bodies to brutalize hundreds of students for peacefully protesting. This character being a cop is also incredibly antithetical to this book's messaging about the criminalization and forced poverty of the lower class. There’s some other spoiler-y stuff I won’t mention that makes me extra hate this guy, but I really didn’t understand this choice. There wouldn’t have had to be so much page space wasted railing against the police (to no avail) if he had just NOT BEEN A COP.
Overall, I was hooked enough by the premise, the characters, and world-building to read through the whole book, and I’m glad I did, but I was put off enough by the writing issues and the cop love interest that I’m certain I will not be continuing with this series.
CW: classism, abusive relationship (past), adult/minor relationship, trauma, grief, murder, blood, dead body, gun violence, sibling death (past), gambling, fire, medical content, death of loved one (past), emesis, alcohol, hospitalization, death of parents (past), car accident (past)
Thank you to the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!