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A review by emmaskies
The Sting of Victory by S.D. Simper
1.0
This is by far and away the worst book I've read in 2023, of the 102 books I've read so far this year.
I read this for the Shit We've Read: After Dark podcast which is the only reason I finished it. Were I not reading this to record a podcast I would have DNF'd it by page 2. I don't even have it in me to write a cohesive review right now because we just recorded the episode and I'm a lightweight who's three glasses of wine in so here are my notes on the book for the episode:
- Hands down the worst prologue I’ve ever read in my life. My god, what is this complete fucking mess?
- The main character's name is FLOWRIDIA?????? (My own nicknames for this travesty of a name include: Flo Rida, Floridian, Florida Woman, Fluoride In The Tap Water, Heavy Flow, Flow Chart). That's the worst name I've ever had to read over and over again. The name appears 2,231 times in this godforsaken book (322 pages). LEARN WHAT A PRONOUN IS, I AM BEGGING.
- Horrendous writing and atrocious world building. It takes a bunch of fantasy creatures and shoves them all into a pot stirred into a nothing stew to try to distract you from the fact that there’s no comprehensible plot.
- All of the characters are almost completely one dimensional with no real motivations or personality. There’s the naïve one, the nice one, the other naïve one, the abusive one, the drunk one, the religious one, the loud one, and that’s about it.
- WHAT WAS THE PLOT? FOR A DOLLAR, NAME A PLOT, ANY PLOT.
- The entire “romance” plotline in this book is just abuse. It’s physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Even when it “turns” it’s still abusive. Ayla’s big crying speech reads like literally any abuser sobbing at their partner that they’ll change, they’ll be better, and then that they’re a disgusting, horrible, awful, no good person and should just die all to manipulate their partner into staying and caring for them.
- This book has absolutely no idea what it wants to say about that abuse. It flip flops seemingly at random between being a cautionary tale of falling into an abusive relationship while everyone around you just lets it happen, and a message that ultimately says you can fix your abuser with nothing but the power of love and kindness, which is frankly fucking disgusting.
- The way the author skirts around giving Flo Rida’s age MULTIPLE TIMES is an insane red flag and I’m going to take that to mean she’s a child. It’s joked that she has the body of a twelve year old and then amended to “no you look at least fifteen,” and when she is point blank asked her age multiple times she responds only with “I’m older than I look.” Paired with Ayla saying “age is just a number” not once, but TWICE, and her line late in the book that essentially amounts to “you’re very mature for your age,” it's disturbing. (post-recording: one of our other hosts remembers the book mentioning her age at some past point and extrapolating that to put the MCs age at about 17 within this book. Which...yikes. I am not into reading about the sexual abuse of anyone, but certainly not a minor.)
- We can get an exact age for the one that’s 1,736 years old, but not for the what I’m going to assume is a near child she’s coerced into a sexual relationship? I wonder why that is…
- Absolutely atrocious sex scenes. It reads like something written by a cis-het man who can’t conceive of what sex could even be outside of penetrative PiV sex, so color me shocked when I found out the author is a lesbian. Writing sex scenes is a skill, y'all, and not everyone has it. These are very very bad.
- I saw someone's review refer to this relationship as a domme/sub dynamic and I cannot stress enough that that’s not what this is. D/S dynamics are mutually consensual, negotiated, they include safewords and aftercare, and this is not that. This is just one person preying upon someone younger, more naïve, and more inexperienced.
- It brings up slavery a lot for a book that has literally nothing to say about it and where we never actually meet one of these former slaves. Slavery is brought up again and again and again only in telling us that Etolie (fair skinned) is the ~savior of slaves~ because that’s all there is to her other than her one (1) allotted trait of alcoholism and it’s used simply to make the good guys look good and the bad guys look bad. There is no discussion of what slavery actually means in this world, who becomes slaves, or any real discussion of slaves as people. They’re invisible props. There’s also a completely throwaway line about refugees that we never come back to after that whole genocide thing.
- There’s a bizarre gender binary going on, ironically with the one angelic character. The author is so strictly set on that binary that there’s a “She? He? It.” moment when she doesn’t know how to refer to an angel being possessed by a god.
I read this for the Shit We've Read: After Dark podcast which is the only reason I finished it. Were I not reading this to record a podcast I would have DNF'd it by page 2. I don't even have it in me to write a cohesive review right now because we just recorded the episode and I'm a lightweight who's three glasses of wine in so here are my notes on the book for the episode:
- Hands down the worst prologue I’ve ever read in my life. My god, what is this complete fucking mess?
- The main character's name is FLOWRIDIA?????? (My own nicknames for this travesty of a name include: Flo Rida, Floridian, Florida Woman, Fluoride In The Tap Water, Heavy Flow, Flow Chart). That's the worst name I've ever had to read over and over again. The name appears 2,231 times in this godforsaken book (322 pages). LEARN WHAT A PRONOUN IS, I AM BEGGING.
- Horrendous writing and atrocious world building. It takes a bunch of fantasy creatures and shoves them all into a pot stirred into a nothing stew to try to distract you from the fact that there’s no comprehensible plot.
- All of the characters are almost completely one dimensional with no real motivations or personality. There’s the naïve one, the nice one, the other naïve one, the abusive one, the drunk one, the religious one, the loud one, and that’s about it.
- WHAT WAS THE PLOT? FOR A DOLLAR, NAME A PLOT, ANY PLOT.
- The entire “romance” plotline in this book is just abuse. It’s physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Even when it “turns” it’s still abusive. Ayla’s big crying speech reads like literally any abuser sobbing at their partner that they’ll change, they’ll be better, and then that they’re a disgusting, horrible, awful, no good person and should just die all to manipulate their partner into staying and caring for them.
- This book has absolutely no idea what it wants to say about that abuse. It flip flops seemingly at random between being a cautionary tale of falling into an abusive relationship while everyone around you just lets it happen, and a message that ultimately says you can fix your abuser with nothing but the power of love and kindness, which is frankly fucking disgusting.
- The way the author skirts around giving Flo Rida’s age MULTIPLE TIMES is an insane red flag and I’m going to take that to mean she’s a child. It’s joked that she has the body of a twelve year old and then amended to “no you look at least fifteen,” and when she is point blank asked her age multiple times she responds only with “I’m older than I look.” Paired with Ayla saying “age is just a number” not once, but TWICE, and her line late in the book that essentially amounts to “you’re very mature for your age,” it's disturbing. (post-recording: one of our other hosts remembers the book mentioning her age at some past point and extrapolating that to put the MCs age at about 17 within this book. Which...yikes. I am not into reading about the sexual abuse of anyone, but certainly not a minor.)
- We can get an exact age for the one that’s 1,736 years old, but not for the what I’m going to assume is a near child she’s coerced into a sexual relationship? I wonder why that is…
- Absolutely atrocious sex scenes. It reads like something written by a cis-het man who can’t conceive of what sex could even be outside of penetrative PiV sex, so color me shocked when I found out the author is a lesbian. Writing sex scenes is a skill, y'all, and not everyone has it. These are very very bad.
- I saw someone's review refer to this relationship as a domme/sub dynamic and I cannot stress enough that that’s not what this is. D/S dynamics are mutually consensual, negotiated, they include safewords and aftercare, and this is not that. This is just one person preying upon someone younger, more naïve, and more inexperienced.
- It brings up slavery a lot for a book that has literally nothing to say about it and where we never actually meet one of these former slaves. Slavery is brought up again and again and again only in telling us that Etolie (fair skinned) is the ~savior of slaves~ because that’s all there is to her other than her one (1) allotted trait of alcoholism and it’s used simply to make the good guys look good and the bad guys look bad. There is no discussion of what slavery actually means in this world, who becomes slaves, or any real discussion of slaves as people. They’re invisible props. There’s also a completely throwaway line about refugees that we never come back to after that whole genocide thing.
- There’s a bizarre gender binary going on, ironically with the one angelic character. The author is so strictly set on that binary that there’s a “She? He? It.” moment when she doesn’t know how to refer to an angel being possessed by a god.