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A review by eliwray
Shadow Chase by Seressia Glass
2.0
Content warning for the bury your gays trope.
In the previous book, gay and trans folks were kept entirely out of all worldbuilding, all characterization, all language used, in a rather airtight way. This time we get a genderqueer god briefly mentioned, and two minor gay characters... one of whom we meet as a dead body. The other gay character is in the same line of work as the protag but is just jarringly incompetent at his job... levels of incompetence that throw me out of the story several times. It's a really unpleasant set of representation choices.
It's a real shame, because the plot, romance and worldbuilding are all developing, if not in a flawless way, certainly in an intriguing, enjoyable direction. I'd love to be able to focus on that and finish the series. I like the leads enough to want to continue. But I'm not gonna stick around as a reader if I'm being treated as disposable because I'm queer. I could handle not being represented at all, no author is perfect. But this kind of rep is demeaning.
In the previous book, gay and trans folks were kept entirely out of all worldbuilding, all characterization, all language used, in a rather airtight way. This time we get a genderqueer god briefly mentioned, and two minor gay characters... one of whom we meet as a dead body. The other gay character is in the same line of work as the protag but is just jarringly incompetent at his job... levels of incompetence that throw me out of the story several times. It's a really unpleasant set of representation choices.
It's a real shame, because the plot, romance and worldbuilding are all developing, if not in a flawless way, certainly in an intriguing, enjoyable direction. I'd love to be able to focus on that and finish the series. I like the leads enough to want to continue. But I'm not gonna stick around as a reader if I'm being treated as disposable because I'm queer. I could handle not being represented at all, no author is perfect. But this kind of rep is demeaning.