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A review by kelseeraine
The Blood Gift by N.E. Davenport
1.5
Actually a really fun and enjoyable read. Unfortunately, it's rated so low because there is one part of the book where the FMC almost gets raped. While I understand that this can be used as a plot point, it automatically lowered my opinion of this book for 3 reasons:
1. It was entirely unnecessary! The author added in the near sexual assault of our main character for apparently absolutely no apparent reason! It did not do a single thing to advance the plot or character motivations. Some people might argue that it serves to illustrate how horrible that character is and how horrible the world would be if he was allowed to win. However, I would argue that the violence and disregard for human life he showed was MORE than enough. Adding in the sexual assault at that point was just pointless.
2. More egregious than it not having anything to add to the plot, it added absolutely nothing to the character. If you, as an author, feel the need to add the sexual assault of women into your book (which, really, hasnt that been done enough?) you must make it MEAN something. This book did not do that at all. In fact, after such a dramatically traumatizing incident, the character appears to be mostly fine. The attempted assault is only brought up twice after it happens (once immediately after for like 2 chapters and once when she has to face him again) and the character is not affected by it the rest of the time. It doesn't effect the way she interacts with others, the world, or herself. Though probably not the author's intention, this does perpetuate the narrative that women should be able to just "get over" an assault like that or at the very least not let it effect their life. It very much feels like the author was trivializing the seriousness of the situation and thus trivializing the experiences of every person who has ever gone through it.
3. Finally, there were absolutely no trigger warnings for such a sensitive topic. Though it may be an unfair double standard, I specifically pretty much only read female authors because this kind of on-page violence is usually avoided or handled with infinitely more care. This makes my disappointment in this book and this author all the more poignant, because as a woman, I feel she either should have done the topic more justice or decided against brutalizing her characters in that way. I expect male authors to (wrongly) not know the significance of such trauma and to use it as mere "shock value" for the readers, but I do expect a female author to know better.
All in all, I guess most of my feelings can be summed up by the fact that I think the sexual assault of women in media is a tired trope that needs to die. Every woman knows how scary that would be and is afraid of it constantly, there should be no reason we are forced to endure it in media as well as in real life. I find that in most cases, like this one, it adds very little to the plot or characters and does much more to remind the readers that, even in fantasy worlds, women are not safe from such atrocities. (And that's not even getting into the fact that male characters almost never deal with the same violence, despite the claim that sexual violence makes the plot have higher stakes.)
Overall, without what was mentioned above, I would have rated it 4 stars. I actually quite enjoyed the plot, characters, and the narrative. I just CANNOT, in good conscious, give a positive rating to a book that would do that. I rarely let one thing ruin an entire book, however, this was a very necessary exception.
1. It was entirely unnecessary! The author added in the near sexual assault of our main character for apparently absolutely no apparent reason! It did not do a single thing to advance the plot or character motivations. Some people might argue that it serves to illustrate how horrible that character is and how horrible the world would be if he was allowed to win. However, I would argue that the violence and disregard for human life he showed was MORE than enough. Adding in the sexual assault at that point was just pointless.
2. More egregious than it not having anything to add to the plot, it added absolutely nothing to the character. If you, as an author, feel the need to add the sexual assault of women into your book (which, really, hasnt that been done enough?) you must make it MEAN something. This book did not do that at all. In fact, after such a dramatically traumatizing incident, the character appears to be mostly fine. The attempted assault is only brought up twice after it happens (once immediately after for like 2 chapters and once when she has to face him again) and the character is not affected by it the rest of the time. It doesn't effect the way she interacts with others, the world, or herself. Though probably not the author's intention, this does perpetuate the narrative that women should be able to just "get over" an assault like that or at the very least not let it effect their life. It very much feels like the author was trivializing the seriousness of the situation and thus trivializing the experiences of every person who has ever gone through it.
3. Finally, there were absolutely no trigger warnings for such a sensitive topic. Though it may be an unfair double standard, I specifically pretty much only read female authors because this kind of on-page violence is usually avoided or handled with infinitely more care. This makes my disappointment in this book and this author all the more poignant, because as a woman, I feel she either should have done the topic more justice or decided against brutalizing her characters in that way. I expect male authors to (wrongly) not know the significance of such trauma and to use it as mere "shock value" for the readers, but I do expect a female author to know better.
All in all, I guess most of my feelings can be summed up by the fact that I think the sexual assault of women in media is a tired trope that needs to die. Every woman knows how scary that would be and is afraid of it constantly, there should be no reason we are forced to endure it in media as well as in real life. I find that in most cases, like this one, it adds very little to the plot or characters and does much more to remind the readers that, even in fantasy worlds, women are not safe from such atrocities. (And that's not even getting into the fact that male characters almost never deal with the same violence, despite the claim that sexual violence makes the plot have higher stakes.)
Overall, without what was mentioned above, I would have rated it 4 stars. I actually quite enjoyed the plot, characters, and the narrative. I just CANNOT, in good conscious, give a positive rating to a book that would do that. I rarely let one thing ruin an entire book, however, this was a very necessary exception.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment