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A review by arcalumens
Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Before we had drunk history, we had rejected princesses on Tumblr!
That's basically how I feel about this. It starts out saying that people may not finish this book because they will read some inaccuracy or something that they don't understand and decide the rest of the book is full of inaccuracies also (which sounds strange because... is history not ever changing?). But the book also paints half of the tales and folklore and myths as fact and doesn't explicitly tell you every time that they might be propaganda or myths or legends until after the fact. Some of them are very clearly folk stories and other ones are pieced together from legend and fact but never is it clearly delineated which is which in every story. Some get graphic and some are very realistic and others are like children stories. Thankfully there is a legend that explains which are kid-friendly and which aren't, but honestly, it's a book about women's history, it's not all roses ever. I think ordering the stories for children and the ones that include mature events separately would have made for better reading to kids instead of skipping around the book. Instead everything is shuffled together and leads to a very odd rollercoaster of emotions as a reader. It doesn't feel well researched when everything is cobbled together in that sense, even though the bibliography and acknowledgments seem VERY thorough.
Anyway. I'm glad this this exists and that I own this, and have read it, finally. I just had issues with the presentation.
Also every trigger warning is needed.
That's basically how I feel about this. It starts out saying that people may not finish this book because they will read some inaccuracy or something that they don't understand and decide the rest of the book is full of inaccuracies also (which sounds strange because... is history not ever changing?). But the book also paints half of the tales and folklore and myths as fact and doesn't explicitly tell you every time that they might be propaganda or myths or legends until after the fact. Some of them are very clearly folk stories and other ones are pieced together from legend and fact but never is it clearly delineated which is which in every story. Some get graphic and some are very realistic and others are like children stories. Thankfully there is a legend that explains which are kid-friendly and which aren't, but honestly, it's a book about women's history, it's not all roses ever. I think ordering the stories for children and the ones that include mature events separately would have made for better reading to kids instead of skipping around the book. Instead everything is shuffled together and leads to a very odd rollercoaster of emotions as a reader. It doesn't feel well researched when everything is cobbled together in that sense, even though the bibliography and acknowledgments seem VERY thorough.
Anyway. I'm glad this this exists and that I own this, and have read it, finally. I just had issues with the presentation.
Also every trigger warning is needed.