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reflectiverambling_nalana 's review for:
The Sirens
by Emilia Hart
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A lot of the time it can feel that women are fighting the world. Historically they have been more venerable, more easily disposed, are critical of our bodies and have them criticized. Men have their own challenges and are boxed into judgement and standards. But they have also been given more credit and power. This book centers about the echoes of this struggle through time through the lens of someone fleeing ridicule and assumptions in our modern era and those back to the early days of colonial Australia.
Let me start with the positive. There are some very lovely environmental descriptions. For those of us in the US it might also introduce people to a part of world history that is less known. I enjoyed the narration of the audiobook quite a lot. And I like that it folded in different types of relationships. The strongest of these for me were in the historical sections.
What was lacking in my reading experience is simply that nothing really stood out. There are many stories about social benefit of the doubt when it comes to masculine or somehow more advantageous persons. There are many family stories. Split time narratives are a common format that, in the author's defense, are very difficult to really knit in. Avenging beings are certainly not common--the cause of the pattern being revealed relatively early had me hoping for a great twist or other later. That never came. With that block in place a lot of this became sadly rather predictable.
Being able to see where a story is going isn't always a dead end for a read. But if you're going to play your hand, you need to at least tie us emotionally to the story. To give us some thread to still follow. Yes, I couldn't see exactly how it would unfold and it did legitimately near the end trick me by almost making a twist that would have left me actually as a rather mad reader as I thought it would have undermined what points were to be had.
What was so frustrating about this experience is that I never bought into the reason it had to have a split timeline or a fantastical element. There was very little mystery as to why this condition existed in the present day. And without fleshing out the original myths and making the majority of the emotion of those in the past be fear and worry rather than an awakening to the injustice of it all, it seemed to just be there because the author wanted to play with this myth. Yet so many questions on that side were still left open that it was more of an 'okay, and?'
That's not to say that I would tell someone not to read this. It's just not a standout, which is a shame. I can absolutely see Hart's potential in her prose. I certainly am interested in seeing where she goes with their next book. I admit that part of my disappointment is that I had great hopes for this novel. As it stands, it is an ambitious first attempt that just didn't work for me as it was structured.
Let me start with the positive. There are some very lovely environmental descriptions. For those of us in the US it might also introduce people to a part of world history that is less known. I enjoyed the narration of the audiobook quite a lot. And I like that it folded in different types of relationships. The strongest of these for me were in the historical sections.
What was lacking in my reading experience is simply that nothing really stood out. There are many stories about social benefit of the doubt when it comes to masculine or somehow more advantageous persons. There are many family stories. Split time narratives are a common format that, in the author's defense, are very difficult to really knit in. Avenging beings are certainly not common--the cause of the pattern being revealed relatively early had me hoping for a great twist or other later. That never came. With that block in place a lot of this became sadly rather predictable.
Being able to see where a story is going isn't always a dead end for a read. But if you're going to play your hand, you need to at least tie us emotionally to the story. To give us some thread to still follow. Yes, I couldn't see exactly how it would unfold and it did legitimately near the end trick me by almost making a twist that would have left me actually as a rather mad reader as I thought it would have undermined what points were to be had.
What was so frustrating about this experience is that I never bought into the reason it had to have a split timeline or a fantastical element. There was very little mystery as to why this condition existed in the present day. And without fleshing out the original myths and making the majority of the emotion of those in the past be fear and worry rather than an awakening to the injustice of it all, it seemed to just be there because the author wanted to play with this myth. Yet so many questions on that side were still left open that it was more of an 'okay, and?'
That's not to say that I would tell someone not to read this. It's just not a standout, which is a shame. I can absolutely see Hart's potential in her prose. I certainly am interested in seeing where she goes with their next book. I admit that part of my disappointment is that I had great hopes for this novel. As it stands, it is an ambitious first attempt that just didn't work for me as it was structured.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Colonisation, Classism, Deportation