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A review by rebeccazh
Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop
Reread this, Written in Red and Vision of Silver.
I really liked Written in Red because of the interactions between Meg and Sam. Was disappointed to realize that Sam doesn't make much of an appearance in the second nor third books. Meg's kindness and guilelessness is really sweet. My favourite parts of the book was where she chose to be generous and kind, unknowingly winning others over. The arc focused on her coaxing Sam out of his shell is wonderful. Really great to read. I love stories about healing.
Unfortunately, the subsequent books are very heavy on the narrative about gender and romance and all that that the story felt bogged down by it. Should've expected that since this is primarily a series about romance.
Also couldn't ignore the parts that I really didn't like - I have some major problems with this series so far. It's intensely gendered. I've read Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series and I see the similarities. Intensely heteronormative, lots of gender stereotypes (men are protective, dominant, strong, aggressive, dangerous, etcetc; women are precious, need to be looked after, sweet, etcetc), all the men in the series are focused on a single woman who is Immensely Important, characters are referred to by their gender more often than not as though gender predominates everything. Left me with a faintly icky feeling. It also causes the characters to be quite indistinguishable from each other - all the men are similar to each other, and all the women are similar to each other.
Soo. First book was good. Second and third, not so good at all.
I really liked Written in Red because of the interactions between Meg and Sam. Was disappointed to realize that Sam doesn't make much of an appearance in the second nor third books. Meg's kindness and guilelessness is really sweet. My favourite parts of the book was where she chose to be generous and kind, unknowingly winning others over. The arc focused on her coaxing Sam out of his shell is wonderful. Really great to read. I love stories about healing.
Unfortunately, the subsequent books are very heavy on the narrative about gender and romance and all that that the story felt bogged down by it. Should've expected that since this is primarily a series about romance.
Also couldn't ignore the parts that I really didn't like - I have some major problems with this series so far. It's intensely gendered. I've read Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series and I see the similarities. Intensely heteronormative, lots of gender stereotypes (men are protective, dominant, strong, aggressive, dangerous, etcetc; women are precious, need to be looked after, sweet, etcetc), all the men in the series are focused on a single woman who is Immensely Important, characters are referred to by their gender more often than not as though gender predominates everything. Left me with a faintly icky feeling. It also causes the characters to be quite indistinguishable from each other - all the men are similar to each other, and all the women are similar to each other.
Soo. First book was good. Second and third, not so good at all.