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ihateprozac 's review for:
Dread Nation
by Justina Ireland
I’ve been anticipating the Australian release of this book for over a year and OH MY GOD IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT.
Jane McKeene is the definition of a kickass female lead! She’s great with weapons, feisty, hilariously obnoxious, stubborn, smart, and she has so much agency. There’s nothing about her I didn’t like and she truly felt like a person rather than just a character - which is no easy feat! I also adored her narration and I could practically hear her voice and accent in my head!
The pacing and plot were also fantastic. I initially thought the story would be wholly set in the school in Baltimore, but there’s a prairie element to the story that elevates it to another level. The story is tense, action-packed, and nails that eerie feeling of “something isn’t right here”. And while it’s well-rounded, impactful, and wrapped up nice enough to be a standalone, there's enough ambiguity and potential to go further.
Every character in the book is compelling, interesting, and has a clear purpose. I adored Katherine as a side character, loved and wanted to know more about Gideon, Redfern, and the Duchess, and the villains were downright HATEFUL. With good villains you either wanna fuck em or fight em, and it was definitely the latter here. They were just SO vile!
And refreshingly, there’s no romance! There are hints of romantic feelings, but these characters have their priorities right: they’re not here to shack up, they’re here to survive.
Slavery and racism are central themes in this story, and obviously as a non-black reviewer I can’t speak to how well these elements were executed. To my ignorant ass it read well, felt contextualised well to the (alternate) time period, and the racism was deliberately uncomfortable without ever veering toward exploitative or gratuitous.
There’s some interesting discourse here about fair passing privilege and the race equivalent of the gay/trans panic defence. And I liked that the author always specifies a character’s skin colour instead of just limiting it to the POC as other authors are wont to do.
The author’s note also includes some valuable context about how Native people were treated during this time, and the real events that informed her portrayal of the school and the town.
This book was honestly worth every minute of the agonisingly wait. I wish I had the language to properly articulate how fucking great it is, because I could never do it justice! It’s strong and well-rounded and it’s already shot to the top of the list of my fave reads of 2019.
Representation: Black MC, multiple black side characters, allusions to bisexual MC and asexual side character (uses different language on page owing to the time period)
Jane McKeene is the definition of a kickass female lead! She’s great with weapons, feisty, hilariously obnoxious, stubborn, smart, and she has so much agency. There’s nothing about her I didn’t like and she truly felt like a person rather than just a character - which is no easy feat! I also adored her narration and I could practically hear her voice and accent in my head!
The pacing and plot were also fantastic. I initially thought the story would be wholly set in the school in Baltimore, but there’s a prairie element to the story that elevates it to another level. The story is tense, action-packed, and nails that eerie feeling of “something isn’t right here”. And while it’s well-rounded, impactful, and wrapped up nice enough to be a standalone, there's enough ambiguity and potential to go further.
Every character in the book is compelling, interesting, and has a clear purpose. I adored Katherine as a side character, loved and wanted to know more about Gideon, Redfern, and the Duchess, and the villains were downright HATEFUL. With good villains you either wanna fuck em or fight em, and it was definitely the latter here. They were just SO vile!
And refreshingly, there’s no romance! There are hints of romantic feelings, but these characters have their priorities right: they’re not here to shack up, they’re here to survive.
Slavery and racism are central themes in this story, and obviously as a non-black reviewer I can’t speak to how well these elements were executed. To my ignorant ass it read well, felt contextualised well to the (alternate) time period, and the racism was deliberately uncomfortable without ever veering toward exploitative or gratuitous.
There’s some interesting discourse here about fair passing privilege and the race equivalent of the gay/trans panic defence. And I liked that the author always specifies a character’s skin colour instead of just limiting it to the POC as other authors are wont to do.
The author’s note also includes some valuable context about how Native people were treated during this time, and the real events that informed her portrayal of the school and the town.
This book was honestly worth every minute of the agonisingly wait. I wish I had the language to properly articulate how fucking great it is, because I could never do it justice! It’s strong and well-rounded and it’s already shot to the top of the list of my fave reads of 2019.
Representation: Black MC, multiple black side characters, allusions to bisexual MC and asexual side character (uses different language on page owing to the time period)