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A review by soartfullydone
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
It gives me no pleasure to write this review.
The Jasad Heir was one of the few debuts in 2023 that I was earnestly excited for, namely for it being an Egyptian-inspired enemies-to-lovers tale. Sure, the premise sounded a bit tired, what with it being about a lost royal heir to a fallen country and Fantasy Racism a la magic is forbidden/a threat.
Was I pulled in anyway because the love interest is the heir of the nation that destroyed the main character, Sylvia's, country? That he convinces her to make a deal with him via blackmail, threats, and coercion, forcing Sylvia to walk a dagger's edge between survival and the discovery of her true identity? Absolutely! I've read this fanfiction before and enjoyed it wholeheartedly!
Unfortunately, the intrigue of it all didn't last past the synopsis on the book jacket. From chapter 1, page 1, I immediately disliked Hashem's writing style. I also immediately disliked how this book was edited, and the failure of The Jasad Heir's execution lies in those two realms.
I'm a visual reader. I let descriptions, character appearances, character actions, and sounds play out in my head like a grainy movie. I've never had crystal clear 4K resolution in my mind's eye, but I can always manage to put a scene together and let it play out.
The way Hashem writes made that all but impossible to do the majority of the time because the way she relays information is choppy, out of order, or downright contradictory to what she described before. I found myself constantly editing the text, rearranging sentences to try to make scenes flow naturally after having to press the rewind button in my mind to start anew. This soon made the book deeply unenjoyable to read because, while I'm struggling to put together the shoddy world-building and convoluted politics happening, I'm also fighting to make logically sense of what should be basic actions.
As a few examples, Sylvia eventually encounters a moving mosaic of her dead family members. The text tells me more than once that she avoids looking at it whenever possible out of guilt for her own inaction. In a later scene, the text tells me that she jogs past the mosaic as she enters the training room. She immediately starts to take note of what Arin, the Nizahl Heir, is doing. From this, I think I'm supposed to take away that she is trying to literally outrun her guilt now. It's not until a page later that I am told that she completed her circuits around the room, aka that she was actually just jogging laps. That would've been great to have that information as soon as possible so I could picture her doing that in the scene, rather than retroactively attributing her to have done that.
In another scene, a sparring session between her and an aggressive guard turns bloodthirsty. The text tells me that she splits her lip open, has her arm popped out of socket, and that she pops in back into place. After the spar has ended, I'm told that, actually, Arin assesses her bloodied appearance and "the awkward angle of my broken bones." When! did! she! break! a! bone! Why hasn't she acted like even one bone is broken? Where are the descriptions of pain and nausea and trouble moving or breathing?
It's conveniently absent the way so much needed description is throughout the whole story. So much of The Jasad Heir is either introspection, dialogue dumps, or being told what Sylvia did in the woods, or during training, or in the past, and not what she is actively doing in the moment, unless it's witty banter with Arin. We gotta be present for that!
The editing in general also left much to be desired. A soldier named Ren is killed with an arrow through the eye. His death is confirmed, but on the second-to-last chapter, he's name-dropped opening a carriage door, his death forgotten. Makes me wonder who once died in his place.
Then, there's a segment that I haven't been able to get past. For years now, Sylvia has hidden her Jasadi heritage and pretended to be Omalian. She starts probing at Sefa and Marek's past because she's starting to think these friends she's reluctantly made are also hiding something:
The Jasad Heir was one of the few debuts in 2023 that I was earnestly excited for, namely for it being an Egyptian-inspired enemies-to-lovers tale. Sure, the premise sounded a bit tired, what with it being about a lost royal heir to a fallen country and Fantasy Racism a la magic is forbidden/a threat.
Was I pulled in anyway because the love interest is the heir of the nation that destroyed the main character, Sylvia's, country? That he convinces her to make a deal with him via blackmail, threats, and coercion, forcing Sylvia to walk a dagger's edge between survival and the discovery of her true identity? Absolutely! I've read this fanfiction before and enjoyed it wholeheartedly!
Unfortunately, the intrigue of it all didn't last past the synopsis on the book jacket. From chapter 1, page 1, I immediately disliked Hashem's writing style. I also immediately disliked how this book was edited, and the failure of The Jasad Heir's execution lies in those two realms.
I'm a visual reader. I let descriptions, character appearances, character actions, and sounds play out in my head like a grainy movie. I've never had crystal clear 4K resolution in my mind's eye, but I can always manage to put a scene together and let it play out.
The way Hashem writes made that all but impossible to do the majority of the time because the way she relays information is choppy, out of order, or downright contradictory to what she described before. I found myself constantly editing the text, rearranging sentences to try to make scenes flow naturally after having to press the rewind button in my mind to start anew. This soon made the book deeply unenjoyable to read because, while I'm struggling to put together the shoddy world-building and convoluted politics happening, I'm also fighting to make logically sense of what should be basic actions.
As a few examples, Sylvia eventually encounters a moving mosaic of her dead family members. The text tells me more than once that she avoids looking at it whenever possible out of guilt for her own inaction. In a later scene, the text tells me that she jogs past the mosaic as she enters the training room. She immediately starts to take note of what Arin, the Nizahl Heir, is doing. From this, I think I'm supposed to take away that she is trying to literally outrun her guilt now. It's not until a page later that I am told that she completed her circuits around the room, aka that she was actually just jogging laps. That would've been great to have that information as soon as possible so I could picture her doing that in the scene, rather than retroactively attributing her to have done that.
In another scene, a sparring session between her and an aggressive guard turns bloodthirsty. The text tells me that she splits her lip open, has her arm popped out of socket, and that she pops in back into place. After the spar has ended, I'm told that, actually, Arin assesses her bloodied appearance and "the awkward angle of my broken bones." When! did! she! break! a! bone! Why hasn't she acted like even one bone is broken? Where are the descriptions of pain and nausea and trouble moving or breathing?
It's conveniently absent the way so much needed description is throughout the whole story. So much of The Jasad Heir is either introspection, dialogue dumps, or being told what Sylvia did in the woods, or during training, or in the past, and not what she is actively doing in the moment, unless it's witty banter with Arin. We gotta be present for that!
The editing in general also left much to be desired. A soldier named Ren is killed with an arrow through the eye. His death is confirmed, but on the second-to-last chapter, he's name-dropped opening a carriage door, his death forgotten. Makes me wonder who once died in his place.
Then, there's a segment that I haven't been able to get past. For years now, Sylvia has hidden her Jasadi heritage and pretended to be Omalian. She starts probing at Sefa and Marek's past because she's starting to think these friends she's reluctantly made are also hiding something:
"Marek called the tomato by the wrong name," I said suddenly. Remembering. "A week after I came to the keep, I saw you two in the kitchen. He asked you to pass him an oota. Omalians call tomatoes 'tamatim.' I thought it was strange, and I kept a close eye on him for the next month. I heard him call a slew of vegetables by other names. Lukubi, Orbanian, Nizahlan names for vegetables. He said Yuli was making him practice for the visitors who come on market days. But he was just trying to cover, wasn't he? He was just trying to cover the very first slip."
1. So what nation calls a tomato a tomato? Is that the Jasadi name? Did you just out yourself?
2. If you are pretending to be Omalian and these languages are used enough as trade languages, then shouldn't you have asked, "Why did he call a tamatim an oota?" instead.
3. Is there a reason tomato isn't the Nizahlan name for the fruit, being the conquering colonizers and all?
4. Why is ALL of this told in dialogue? So much of this could've been fixed by keeping it as internal narration.
But these are the little details everywhere that break this book. Sloppy editing and execution, unnatural dialogue and exposition dumps, and a stupid main character who earnestly believes she's intelligent.
So as you can probably tell by now: I don't like the main character, Sylvia. In fact, it's safe to say that I hate her, or how she was written anyway. Sylvia's entire identity hinges on the downfall of her country, Jasad, and the murders of seemingly everyone she has ever known. Understandable! If that had happened to me at eight or nine years old, it would've left an impression! Along with Jasad's violent destruction, Sylvia is also haunted by Hanim, Jasad's disgraced general who was banished even before the country's downfall. Hanim hid Sylvia for years, testing and abusing her because Sylvia's magic is suppressed by invisible magical cuffs only Sylvia sees, in an attempt to break her magic free. Sylvia eventually kills Hanim and has lived on the run as another unassuming Omalian ever since.
The problem with Sylvia's identity hinging on Jasad's downfall, Hanim, and her cuffs/repressed magic is in the way she actively rails against owing her fellow Jasadis anything. She rails against her status as the remaining heir, a title she didn't ask to be born into, she rails against her birth name, she rails against her useless magic, and she rails against the near constant guilt in her own mind said in Hanim's voice. At the same time, she moralizes at you about how Good her country was and how Bad all the other ones are. (Which lol the existence of good countries, that's how you know it's fantasy.) These conflicting topics are all she ever thinks or talks about in a very "methinks the lady doth protest too much" way. (She's eventually distracted by Arin and how awesome he is, but we always circle back to this hamster wheel, don't worry.)
It just became exhausting to read after the fifth chapter or so. This conflict should be an engaging core of her being. A survivor who is trying to live a good life the best she can, while being haunted by the mistreatment of her people all around her. Is surviving good enough, or is everything she's doing an act of betrayal to a broken nation, a hunted people? How much does she owe compared to everyone else? Cool questions! Yet they wound up being boringly repetitive because Sylvia simply doesn't challenge herself. In fact, she goes out of her way to avoid making choices because they could lead to actions she could be held accountable for.
The one choice that she claims that she made? Being blackmailed by Arin! Gurl.... the years of denial have truly rotted your brain.
This does not a morally gray character make. A morally gray character will act selfishly, in calculation or in haste, and those actions will often lead to consequences for others, even if unintentional. It's only Sylvia's thoughts that are selfish; her actions amount to her playing things safe; acting in self-defense so you, the reader, know it is morally just; or revealing her truly good, bleeding heart she's been hiding all this time. Everything in the book that happens to Sylvia truly happens to her, not because she's an active participant in her own life.
I also deeply, deeply hated her invisible magical cuffs. Such stupid plot armor that made the magic system unbearably incomprehensible and convenient. These cuffs apparently squeeze, strangle, or cut into her wrists whenever Sylvia's feeling very emo about something, because feelings = magic. Or, as the text started to remind me repeatedly, Grief. Rage. Fear. Yet, she never once experienced a numbing in her fingers or blood flow problems. I truly think she could've just been emotionally stunted from all her childhood trauma without the cuffs, and the effect/outcome would've been the same. After never having access to a shred of magic since the cuffs were applied, she suddenly starts having fits of magic whenever the plot needs her to. Soon, she can snap her fingers, and things will magically happen even with the cuffs on.
But Mel, you ask, what IS magic in this world? Whatever Hashem wants it to be.
I almost gave this book two stars for Arin at least because his introduction was intriguing. The writing seemed to instantly improve when he was on the page and when he and Sylvia start interacting. That should've told me who the main character truly was, huh. Anyway, he starts off being cold, calculating, and brutal towards Sylvia. Their shared distrust and animosity towards each other was believable and delicious. I was looking forward to how a slow-burn romance would go for them.
Well, apparently I have a different definition and expectation of an enemies-to-lovers slow-burn than others. Folks, by the end of book one, the enemy love interests should still hate each other. Understand? No real acts of romance or affection should've entered the stage at this point. No pining or kissing. Only intensity and an almost unhealthy fixation and obsession on each other. Mutual murder attempts should've also been had aplenty! Why is this so hard to understand?
But by halfway, Sylvia and Arin's dislike of each other all but vanishes. Sylvia is given ample opportunities to kill Arin and escape, and she either doesn't do it or doesn't even consider doing it. No reason is given why beyond excuses. Suddenly, Sylvia acknowledges that she trusts him despite the many times he's stabbed her, and I was just... Gurl, how? When? Can I see it? Oh, was it part of all your training sessions I didn't get to see? As incomprehensible as her sudden change of heart is, Arin's is even more unconvincing, and no, the random 3-4 drabbles we got in his POV did nothing to illuminate his feelings. They actually told us nothing that the text doesn't inform us of elsewhere.
And it sucks because Arin starts off being such A Type, y'know?? One I could recommend to some of my friends, even! But I wouldn't ever tell them to suffer this book for these scraps. Aside from the violence he inflicts on Sylvia at the start of their relationship, she and the readers never see him go after another Jasadi or treat anyone with so much as a hint of unfairness. His monstrous, villainous reputation is just that: a reputation that Sylvia feels the weird need to endlessly gas up. (A smokescreen so you won't notice that he doesn't really do anything.)
Between all that, The Jasad Heir meanders. The majority of the book is Sylvia training for the "trials," which mostly amounts to a training montage I don't get to see, just hear about. The book holds me at arm's length, afraid to let me get too close to Sylvia, to see and experience her growth alongside her. (Probably because no growth is truly happening.) Instead, I'm sitting alone by myself, listening to a muffled "Eye of the Tiger" playing while an announcer vaguely informs me what's going on in the next room.
The trials don't even start until after the 70% mark, and it's such a shame because once again, the writing improved and for what? Yet another thing to rush through? (This is around the time the lowly history minor in me cracked her eyes open and asked, "So... is the story about the other nation's gods sealing Jasadi's god away due to magic-madness [sending them all into a permanent sleep in the process] indisputable truth? Or is that just a story certain parties made up for their gain? Who was even present for that cataclysmic event besides the gods? How was it recorded?" I started internally screaming again because this is NOT a book that encourages questions.)
How the trials concluded was also such a disappointment. A poison-induced dream sequence that wasn't a dream, really? (Also, Sylvia, gurl,,,, are you ever going to truly question your sanity? You hallucinate, hear voices, and see visions you shouldn't have any inkling of and are way too placid about it, hon.)
Suffice it to say, I won't be here for the sequel. I can't sit through an Entitled Returned Queen narrative for a character who decided to reclaim her throne for those who aren't even Jasadi.