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A review by eva_reads_sometimes
Girls of Fate and Fury by Natasha Ngan
1.0
Oh dear, do I have thoughts on this one:
Either I’m too autistic for this book or Natasha Ngan needs to work on her writing really bad because I cannot for the life of me understand how Lei got “I’m on your side! Save me! It’s possible for my child to be born without being the king’s heir if you sneak me out of the palace!” from a couple of seconds of eye contact with the queen. How do you get all that just from looking at someone’s face in complete silence? For all you know she was thinking “Why is he making this dirty Paper bitch touch me?” (Lei ends up being right though, of course, because Natasha’s got themes she wants to push.)
I find Lei’s willingness to posthumously forgive Madam Himura entirely because “she too is a lost woman” disturbing. Forgiveness is all well and good, but forgiving the woman who knowingly sent a bunch of teenagers off to be raped every night (and later killed one of those teenagers) because she’s a woman is completely unthinkable to me. The things Himura did undermines the attempt at a feminist message because forgiving sexual abuse enablers is pretty damn unfeminist imo.
I’d also like to know what possessed Ngan to make half the chapters in first person perspective and the other half in third person perspective. Maybe to try to separate the character voices, but personally I found it annoying having to readjust to the new style every other chapter.
The fact that all of Aoki’s character growth happens off-page is kinda disappointing. Aoki was a pretty interesting character in book 1 and I was excited to see whether she’d grow to understand why the king’s reign was actually awful, and I was excited to see that journey. But we don’t. We get the shock of the king trying to kill her and then immediately cut to several months later when she’s apologising to Lei for everything. This isn’t a fatal flaw with the book, just a missed opportunity for what could’ve been a very interesting character arc.
Finally, I hate that Blue and Lova get paired up at the last second with no explanation. Once again, we skip over Blue’s growth and go straight from her cussing out Lei for being a lesbian to her making eyes at another woman. It’s so fast it’s almost whiplash-inducing.
And I think that’s it. The stuff I haven’t talked about is stuff I barely have opinions on because I found it boring. It’s been a while since I’ve had this little fun with a book.
Either I’m too autistic for this book or Natasha Ngan needs to work on her writing really bad because I cannot for the life of me understand how Lei got “I’m on your side! Save me! It’s possible for my child to be born without being the king’s heir if you sneak me out of the palace!” from a couple of seconds of eye contact with the queen. How do you get all that just from looking at someone’s face in complete silence? For all you know she was thinking “Why is he making this dirty Paper bitch touch me?” (Lei ends up being right though, of course, because Natasha’s got themes she wants to push.)
I find Lei’s willingness to posthumously forgive Madam Himura entirely because “she too is a lost woman” disturbing. Forgiveness is all well and good, but forgiving the woman who knowingly sent a bunch of teenagers off to be raped every night (and later killed one of those teenagers) because she’s a woman is completely unthinkable to me. The things Himura did undermines the attempt at a feminist message because forgiving sexual abuse enablers is pretty damn unfeminist imo.
I’d also like to know what possessed Ngan to make half the chapters in first person perspective and the other half in third person perspective. Maybe to try to separate the character voices, but personally I found it annoying having to readjust to the new style every other chapter.
The fact that all of Aoki’s character growth happens off-page is kinda disappointing. Aoki was a pretty interesting character in book 1 and I was excited to see whether she’d grow to understand why the king’s reign was actually awful, and I was excited to see that journey. But we don’t. We get the shock of the king trying to kill her and then immediately cut to several months later when she’s apologising to Lei for everything. This isn’t a fatal flaw with the book, just a missed opportunity for what could’ve been a very interesting character arc.
Finally, I hate that Blue and Lova get paired up at the last second with no explanation. Once again, we skip over Blue’s growth and go straight from her cussing out Lei for being a lesbian to her making eyes at another woman. It’s so fast it’s almost whiplash-inducing.
And I think that’s it. The stuff I haven’t talked about is stuff I barely have opinions on because I found it boring. It’s been a while since I’ve had this little fun with a book.