A review by sharanyasarathy
The Towers of the Sunset by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

1.0

Ok for all you smug souls, don't think I didn't know this book was going to be bad when I started reading it. However, I was looking for a different kind of bad. Like, Daughters of Darkness bad! I wanted a feel-good YA fantasy novel and I was willing to sacrifice writing to get there. But what this book did end up being was a scattered plot, whiny unsatisfying characters, and a whole lot of misogyny masquerading as equality (yet again... see my Blue Mars review). Creslin comes from a "matriarchal" society which is basically just our society with the genders swapped. Is this supposed to engender sympathy for women oppressed IRL, assuming that the reader is the traditional insecure dude that regularly consumes this type of bad YA sword/magic fantasy? Perhaps. What it does do however, is barrage the reader with passages and passages about the tyranny of women and their complete abuse of any and all power. Passages which would probably induce feelings pretty anti-woman in the reader...

Even besides the claims of misandry, the book has no redeeming qualities. Period. The world is not well built, the writing is bad, the dialogue somehow worse, and every interaction between Creslin and Megaera made me gag.

I read this book so you don't have to!! Luckily it took me like 2 hours or so, so I'm not too bitter.