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prunusnucipersica 's review for:
Lilith
by Nikki Marmery
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
To state the first obvious thing: this book is obsessed with uteruses, and saying that this is what womanhood is. Thus, this book does not include trans women into its feminism, and it inherently misgenders trans men and nonbinary people who do not want to be included as "women". That is TERF rhetoric. It felt like I was reading a lecture on why I, a transmasculine person, need to detransition and embrace my uterus (and thus womanhood). I know many cis women do not feel this way about their uteruses, and I know many trans women who would feel excluded from this kind of narrative.
Second thing that needs to be said: this book is antisemetic. It takes a figure from Jewish mythology, and has her tell Jewish people that they are the cause of patriarchy and gender violence, and that they need to adopt "Christianity, except with wombs" to fix their own religion and liberate women from their chains. Further, this Jewish figure converts to Christianity-but-with-wombs and spends centuries going around preaching it to other women. That's disgusting.
Third: this book's feminism begins and ends with "Goddess worship". So long as women can worship the Goddess, they will learn self-worth, and this will somehow end patriarchy, no other work needed. It cares little about the actual material conditions of the women it is nominally helping, because as long as a woman can be a priestess and as long as women everywhere can worship the Goddess, everything will be a-ok. If you spend even a single brain cell on this, you will immediately recognize its flaws. In fact, this book accidentally wrote this into the book, and the author didn't realize it. (A woman who is in an abusive relationship asks how worshipping the Goddess will help her leave her marriage, when She is silent and offers no help, while her husband has his two brothers and his father to force her to stay. The narrator has no answer for this. This character later dies at the hands of her husband.) It is also inherently white feminist. But apparently, this idea is so compelling that women in the Middle East, upon learning about this ethos, gain self-respect and start making TikTok videos and Instagram reels dancing and burning their veils. (By the way, that's Islamophobia.)
This book has inconsistent worldbuilding, which confuses the cosmology of the story and muddles the message. It's like the author just went "I need to get from point A to point B, no edits." Further, there's 74 chapters in this book, but a lot of them could have been consolidated. I would say it would have benefited from a more competent editor, but a more competent editor would have taken one look at the manuscript for this book and thrown it in the trash.
Second thing that needs to be said: this book is antisemetic. It takes a figure from Jewish mythology, and has her tell Jewish people that they are the cause of patriarchy and gender violence, and that they need to adopt "Christianity, except with wombs" to fix their own religion and liberate women from their chains. Further, this Jewish figure converts to Christianity-but-with-wombs and spends centuries going around preaching it to other women. That's disgusting.
Third: this book's feminism begins and ends with "Goddess worship". So long as women can worship the Goddess, they will learn self-worth, and this will somehow end patriarchy, no other work needed. It cares little about the actual material conditions of the women it is nominally helping, because as long as a woman can be a priestess and as long as women everywhere can worship the Goddess, everything will be a-ok. If you spend even a single brain cell on this, you will immediately recognize its flaws. In fact, this book accidentally wrote this into the book, and the author didn't realize it. (A woman who is in an abusive relationship asks how worshipping the Goddess will help her leave her marriage, when She is silent and offers no help, while her husband has his two brothers and his father to force her to stay. The narrator has no answer for this. This character later dies at the hands of her husband.) It is also inherently white feminist. But apparently, this idea is so compelling that women in the Middle East, upon learning about this ethos, gain self-respect and start making TikTok videos and Instagram reels dancing and burning their veils. (By the way, that's Islamophobia.)
This book has inconsistent worldbuilding, which confuses the cosmology of the story and muddles the message. It's like the author just went "I need to get from point A to point B, no edits." Further, there's 74 chapters in this book, but a lot of them could have been consolidated. I would say it would have benefited from a more competent editor, but a more competent editor would have taken one look at the manuscript for this book and thrown it in the trash.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Miscarriage, Transphobia, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Mental illness, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Murder, Pregnancy