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A review by osladek
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I really enjoyed a lot of this book, but there were too many mistakes and overall bad writing choices to rate it highly. I enjoyed the characters and diversity the most. Having a character communicate in sign language, multiple nonbinary people, and other queer people and POC characters was great to read. I think all the characters felt like real people with realistic dialogue. I enjoyed the lyrical prose and the food descriptions. I think the romance was well written but also left a bit to desire.
For parts that I didn't enjoy, the main stumbling block was the plot. I haven't read such a terribly written murder mystery in a while, but this one took the cake for most predictable and horribly written mystery. The pace has a lot to do with this, the book takes place over a week when we get to the new country our main character is traveling to. Because of this, about 50 things happen every single day and I kept getting whiplash when the writing would say something like, "All this on day 1." Because of the plot whipping by, you don't get any character development, no subtle hinting at angst in the romance, no real story building of the plot, not even a second to breathe in the new world you're in, despite the page length being at 544 pages. This resulted in a horrible mystery that I predicted from the beginning and our two main characters fumbling the entire time trying to react to one plot event before being thrust into another life changing event.
Another issue I have is the decision to write an explicit rape scene and continue to graphically reference it. I think especially since this is fantasy and the book seems to be trying to be light-hearted, it's a confusing choice. If this was trying to be a dark fantasy I might understand it better, but it seems to straddle the two at the same time in a seemingly useless way. I also have conflicted feelings about if we need explicit and graphic SA scenes in any media. There is proven research that shows depicting SA can lead to more violence, regardless of the original media being against it. This also just feels like it unnecessarily causes harm to the readers who might have a history or know someone who has been an SA survivor. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have SA survivors as characters, or never discuss it, but I think this could've been written in a less explicit way that caused less harm and still had the same effect. The book also eventually treated the main character's trauma as almost non-existent when it was so extremely recent to the end of the story.
Overall, I think I will read the sequel since I enjoyed enough of the book to breeze through it and enjoy the characters.
For parts that I didn't enjoy, the main stumbling block was the plot. I haven't read such a terribly written murder mystery in a while, but this one took the cake for most predictable and horribly written mystery. The pace has a lot to do with this, the book takes place over a week when we get to the new country our main character is traveling to. Because of this, about 50 things happen every single day and I kept getting whiplash when the writing would say something like, "All this on day 1." Because of the plot whipping by, you don't get any character development, no subtle hinting at angst in the romance, no real story building of the plot, not even a second to breathe in the new world you're in, despite the page length being at 544 pages. This resulted in a horrible mystery that I predicted from the beginning and our two main characters fumbling the entire time trying to react to one plot event before being thrust into another life changing event.
Another issue I have is the decision to write an explicit rape scene and continue to graphically reference it. I think especially since this is fantasy and the book seems to be trying to be light-hearted, it's a confusing choice. If this was trying to be a dark fantasy I might understand it better, but it seems to straddle the two at the same time in a seemingly useless way. I also have conflicted feelings about if we need explicit and graphic SA scenes in any media. There is proven research that shows depicting SA can lead to more violence, regardless of the original media being against it. This also just feels like it unnecessarily causes harm to the readers who might have a history or know someone who has been an SA survivor. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have SA survivors as characters, or never discuss it, but I think this could've been written in a less explicit way that caused less harm and still had the same effect. The book also eventually treated the main character's trauma as almost non-existent when it was so extremely recent to the end of the story.
Overall, I think I will read the sequel since I enjoyed enough of the book to breeze through it and enjoy the characters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Rape, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Transphobia