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A review by craftygiant
Thornfruit by Felicia Davin
4.0
A really interesting and enjoyable book. It's so good to read a story not only about female characters but with interesting, complicated, flawed, and likeable female protagonists. I enjoy Ev for the same kinds of reasons I love Wydrin or Vintage in Jen Williams' books; they are rounded, capable characters rather than just Strong Female Characters.
It's especially enjoyable to read this book as someone with chronic health issues both physical and mental because of Alizhan. Even though the nature of the barriers Alizhan faces are not explicitly any real ailment or neurotype on this world there are a lot of parallels and I felt seen.
Potential spoilers;
Alizhan makes other people uncomfortable because she is subtly different. She doesn't fully understand facial expressions or tone, she has difficulty knowing what to say, she doesn't understand why some things upset other characters. Her mind works differently than a lot of other peoples and for a lot of the book this hurts her. Some things hurt her that other people don't even consider. Later on she starts to get help actually dealing with this and learning how to live with it, learning coping mechanisms and ways to lessen the hurt. In many ways this felt like my experience of autism. I appreciate the author not explicitly calling it that but it made this one person very happy.
It's especially enjoyable to read this book as someone with chronic health issues both physical and mental because of Alizhan. Even though the nature of the barriers Alizhan faces are not explicitly any real ailment or neurotype on this world there are a lot of parallels and I felt seen.
Potential spoilers;
Alizhan makes other people uncomfortable because she is subtly different. She doesn't fully understand facial expressions or tone, she has difficulty knowing what to say, she doesn't understand why some things upset other characters. Her mind works differently than a lot of other peoples and for a lot of the book this hurts her. Some things hurt her that other people don't even consider. Later on she starts to get help actually dealing with this and learning how to live with it, learning coping mechanisms and ways to lessen the hurt. In many ways this felt like my experience of autism. I appreciate the author not explicitly calling it that but it made this one person very happy.