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A review by cumminsn
Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It is honestly sort of difficult to put into words my exact feelings on this book. Parts of it I liked quite a bit, while others had me physically rolling my eyes. The magic is very fun, and the lore of witches and how they connect to the earth and to each other I found compelling and interesting. But, once the conflict of the story started to come to a head, I found myself enjoying the book less and less. The villains almost become… cartoonish, in a way? It felt like the author was really trying to push home how terrible the antagonist is by just repeatedly having her state her transphobic viewpoints to the point where it was very irritating and tiresome even for me, a cisgender woman.
While there is very positive transgender, and LGBT in general, representation here, there is also rampant transphobia that I could see being very triggering to some. Also, the overuse of swearing and pop culture references took away from my immersion as well. For a book that has different characters that it switches perspectives between, I sometimes found myself having a hard time remembering who was who, with no very large differences in tone from one character to the next. Other than the antagonist, of course. The fact that she was evil was about the most obvious thing in the whole book.
I guess what disappointed me is that there wasn’t quite enough Fantasy to balance out the in-your-face politics that were constantly surfacing. I was more interested in the lore of the world, but the story seemed to stumble over itself to try and include as much political-correctness as possible that some of the characters didn’t even feel like genuine characters and more like just stereotypes being included for the sake of it, which was sad to read. Some of the language used, particularly internet-type wording and references, will likely not age well either.
I forced myself to finish this one. I was invested enough to want to do it, but I don’t know that I’ll be reaching for the sequel right away, if it all. In the end, I felt underwhelmed.
While there is very positive transgender, and LGBT in general, representation here, there is also rampant transphobia that I could see being very triggering to some. Also, the overuse of swearing and pop culture references took away from my immersion as well. For a book that has different characters that it switches perspectives between, I sometimes found myself having a hard time remembering who was who, with no very large differences in tone from one character to the next. Other than the antagonist, of course. The fact that she was evil was about the most obvious thing in the whole book.
I guess what disappointed me is that there wasn’t quite enough Fantasy to balance out the in-your-face politics that were constantly surfacing. I was more interested in the lore of the world, but the story seemed to stumble over itself to try and include as much political-correctness as possible that some of the characters didn’t even feel like genuine characters and more like just stereotypes being included for the sake of it, which was sad to read. Some of the language used, particularly internet-type wording and references, will likely not age well either.
I forced myself to finish this one. I was invested enough to want to do it, but I don’t know that I’ll be reaching for the sequel right away, if it all. In the end, I felt underwhelmed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Blood, Car accident, Transphobia, Cursing, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Sexism, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Alcohol and Body horror
Minor: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Gaslighting, Medical content, and Outing