Scan barcode
A review by anna_hepworth
The Cockatrice Boys by Joan Aiken
1.0
Usually I love Aiken's books, but this left me cold. The big problem -- the unrelenting Boys Town aspect of the story. The deliberate and foregrounded misogyny against the (very) few female characters was unpleasant.
And this is a book that probably passes the Bechdel test (I'm not going back to check, because ick). The story focuses on a train heading across England, to fight the monsters who have taken over. And while it is a train for males only, there are two female characters, one of whom is the cook, the other of whom is a little girl. Given that there is at least one scene with these as the only two in the kitchen, there was at least a conversation between them. Whether it was about The Men, I don't remember.
I'm not sure if this was deliberately written as so horrible. But whatever the message was that it the author was going for has completely missed me.
I finished it. Because I'm an obsessive story completer. Because maybe it got better. Because maybe the explanation for the world would make up for everything else. And I wish I hadn't.
And this is a book that probably passes the Bechdel test (I'm not going back to check, because ick). The story focuses on a train heading across England, to fight the monsters who have taken over. And while it is a train for males only, there are two female characters, one of whom is the cook, the other of whom is a little girl. Given that there is at least one scene with these as the only two in the kitchen, there was at least a conversation between them. Whether it was about The Men, I don't remember.
I'm not sure if this was deliberately written as so horrible. But whatever the message was that it the author was going for has completely missed me.
I finished it. Because I'm an obsessive story completer. Because maybe it got better. Because maybe the explanation for the world would make up for everything else. And I wish I hadn't.