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A review by magneticcrow
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
So many folks are pitching this book as “If you liked Legends & Lattes…” which, I see the similarities? Yeah it’s a lesbian romance set in a fantasy world where the fighter main character hangs up her sword to open a small shop and deals with the logistics of retail, rehabilitating a space, and disengaging from her messy past.
But one critical difference…. L&L is well written, with engaging characters with clear and consistent characterization and growth, and logical plot points. Tea is… not.
Just a laundry list of some of my issues, a few of them a hair spoilery for the 100 pages or so I managed to get through:
The characterization is inconsistent, you can’t just *say* a character is one way and then have them act entirely a different way, that is not how decent characterization works. Like… is Kianthe shy and withdrawn or bubbly and outspoken? Is Reyna extroverted and charming or bristly and quiet? The author doesn’t know how to show what she’s telling, she goes to lengths to repeatedly describe the characters the first way then show them behaving the second.
The writing is crude, choppy, and redundant. World building is randomly dropped into the middle of action in a way that disrupts the flow and emotion of a sequence. This is a me problem, but I hate the world “Magicary” passionately.
The little character description we get is both cringey and poorly executed. For example, Kianthe has “skin the color of drying clay” which is… what? white? grey? red? light brown? dark brown? yellow? seriously, what kind of clay are we talking about here? this isn’t even a good comparison, just say what color you mean. And then Reyna is just “paler”, which is also unhelpful. I thought we all agreed that describing a person of color’s skin by relating them to objects, and then either not describing the skin tone of white people or doing it in a way that reads as “theirs was normal though”, is bad. Real bad.
The plot just makes so little sense, if we’re on the lam from a despotic and vengeful queen, why are we very publicly taking advantage of her anti-banditry incentive programs to obtain a storefront? I want to scream at these people.
I found myself dreading certain inevitable plot points instead of looking forward to them, hence the dnf. :\
But one critical difference…. L&L is well written, with engaging characters with clear and consistent characterization and growth, and logical plot points. Tea is… not.
Just a laundry list of some of my issues, a few of them a hair spoilery for the 100 pages or so I managed to get through:
The writing is crude, choppy, and redundant. World building is randomly dropped into the middle of action in a way that disrupts the flow and emotion of a sequence. This is a me problem, but I hate the world “Magicary” passionately.
The little character description we get is both cringey and poorly executed. For example, Kianthe has “skin the color of drying clay” which is… what? white? grey? red? light brown? dark brown? yellow? seriously, what kind of clay are we talking about here? this isn’t even a good comparison, just say what color you mean. And then Reyna is just “paler”, which is also unhelpful. I thought we all agreed that describing a person of color’s skin by relating them to objects, and then either not describing the skin tone of white people or doing it in a way that reads as “theirs was normal though”, is bad. Real bad.
The plot just makes so little sense, if we’re on the lam from a despotic and vengeful queen, why are we very publicly taking advantage of her anti-banditry incentive programs to obtain a storefront? I want to scream at these people.
I found myself dreading certain inevitable plot points instead of looking forward to them, hence the dnf. :\