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neera_exlibris 's review for:
Obsidian
by Sarah J. Daley
Thank you to Angry Robot and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I started out quite enjoying this book. I liked the Italian mafia/gang-inspired setting with historical aspects, plus the dustpunk element was pretty cool. I was interested to see how this portrayal of colonisation would play out, and I thought the different levels of stakes the characters had in the plot were established. That's unfortunately where my enjoyment of this book ended.
These are some of the more minor things that I didn't like:
- There wasn't an adequate explanation for why Shade was so angry about her father's death when by all accounts--including her own!--he was pretty horrible to her. It gave the impression that they were very close when they clearly weren't.
- This one might be a little nitpicky but it took me out of the story a bit: why is Shade even called Shade? Her last name being Nox is fine because it's Latin, but I don't think wanting to give a character a "cool" name justifies breaking the language conventions of your world.
- The climax of the plot hinges on the Wild Power, but we never get a good explanation for what that actually is, so it fell a bit flat.
If the only issues with this book were the minor ones listed above, it would have been a much more enjoyable read. Unfortunately there were some major issues that need addressing:
- I could tell that the author was attempting to avoid it, but this still ended up essentially being a white saviour narrative. This could have been partially avoided if Shade hadn't spent the whole book talking about how she was going to be the one to save everyone etc etc., but I think there still would have been elements of it.
- There was never an explanation for why Raiden isn't affected by the magic in the same way as the other characters (who are all native to the nation the story takes place in), and also for why he's a preternaturally good swordsman. The Bhaskar Empire already felt "Asian"-coded and Raiden is very much coded as East Asian ("fine black hair", "delicate features", etc.), so this felt very uncomfortably close to "ninja" stereotypes.
- Speaking of the Bhaskar Empire, we did not get enough information on it for it to feel fleshed out at all. And the way it was coded was pretty bad too. Bhaskar is a Hindi word and yet Raiden (who is from the Empire) is very East-Asian coded, so this ended up coming across as yet another story by a white author who ignores the incredible diversity within Asia and so lumps all Asian identities together indiscriminately.
- And finally, the friendship and romance coding between Shade and Matteo was all over the place. Matteo confesses his feelings for her and they begin a physical relationship, which is fine and I did appreciate that a female lead character got to explore more than one relationship, but the level of feeling Shade had for Matteo after that was frankly pretty unrealistic. At most she's attracted to him and she's maybe starting to develop a bit of romantic interest in him, but there's absolutely no way her feelings for him were strong enough by that point to literally bend time and change events for him when he dies, so it all felt very "insta-love" to me which I hated. And then after all that they claimed to be "just friends" but also "beyond lovers". I understand that they bonded through shared trauma/experiences, but if there wasn't intended to be a romantic element to their relationship, it shouldn't have been so strongly coded as such. It's possible to write female/male friendships that even become friends-with-benefits relationships without romantic coding.
The fact that the pivotal events of the book were dependent on the strength of a relationship that was established far too late in the story to be deep enough and for us to care enough about it for that to work was a bad ending to a book that already had many issues.
I started out quite enjoying this book. I liked the Italian mafia/gang-inspired setting with historical aspects, plus the dustpunk element was pretty cool. I was interested to see how this portrayal of colonisation would play out, and I thought the different levels of stakes the characters had in the plot were established. That's unfortunately where my enjoyment of this book ended.
These are some of the more minor things that I didn't like:
- There wasn't an adequate explanation for why Shade was so angry about her father's death when by all accounts--including her own!--he was pretty horrible to her. It gave the impression that they were very close when they clearly weren't.
- This one might be a little nitpicky but it took me out of the story a bit: why is Shade even called Shade? Her last name being Nox is fine because it's Latin, but I don't think wanting to give a character a "cool" name justifies breaking the language conventions of your world.
- The climax of the plot hinges on the Wild Power, but we never get a good explanation for what that actually is, so it fell a bit flat.
If the only issues with this book were the minor ones listed above, it would have been a much more enjoyable read. Unfortunately there were some major issues that need addressing:
- I could tell that the author was attempting to avoid it, but this still ended up essentially being a white saviour narrative. This could have been partially avoided if Shade hadn't spent the whole book talking about how she was going to be the one to save everyone etc etc., but I think there still would have been elements of it.
- There was never an explanation for why Raiden isn't affected by the magic in the same way as the other characters (who are all native to the nation the story takes place in), and also for why he's a preternaturally good swordsman. The Bhaskar Empire already felt "Asian"-coded and Raiden is very much coded as East Asian ("fine black hair", "delicate features", etc.), so this felt very uncomfortably close to "ninja" stereotypes.
- Speaking of the Bhaskar Empire, we did not get enough information on it for it to feel fleshed out at all. And the way it was coded was pretty bad too. Bhaskar is a Hindi word and yet Raiden (who is from the Empire) is very East-Asian coded, so this ended up coming across as yet another story by a white author who ignores the incredible diversity within Asia and so lumps all Asian identities together indiscriminately.
- And finally, the friendship and romance coding between Shade and Matteo was all over the place. Matteo confesses his feelings for her and they begin a physical relationship, which is fine and I did appreciate that a female lead character got to explore more than one relationship, but the level of feeling Shade had for Matteo after that was frankly pretty unrealistic. At most she's attracted to him and she's maybe starting to develop a bit of romantic interest in him, but there's absolutely no way her feelings for him were strong enough by that point to literally bend time and change events for him when he dies, so it all felt very "insta-love" to me which I hated. And then after all that they claimed to be "just friends" but also "beyond lovers". I understand that they bonded through shared trauma/experiences, but if there wasn't intended to be a romantic element to their relationship, it shouldn't have been so strongly coded as such. It's possible to write female/male friendships that even become friends-with-benefits relationships without romantic coding.
The fact that the pivotal events of the book were dependent on the strength of a relationship that was established far too late in the story to be deep enough and for us to care enough about it for that to work was a bad ending to a book that already had many issues.