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A review by skylarkblue1
Redsight by Meredith Mooring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!
This was a rough one. Honestly if I didn't write down notes, I probably wouldn't have been able to make a review because it was so forgettable I was forgetting things as I read.
Somehow the book manages to constantly lore dump but explain nothing (I still have very little idea what tactus is, the core main concept of this *entire* universe it seems) - Sometimes it was used interchangeably with blood, sometimes it seemed separate. I also don't believe it was ever actually *really* explained why using tactus rips one cult apart and not others. Also couldn't get that good of a grasp on many other core concepts like the whole "unseeing, unburning, unfeeling". I got unseeing, unfeeling I don't really get the "feeling" part, and unburning I was just incredibly confused on. Like, what? Burning what? "Unlightened" or something would have been closer. Just a ton of really core things like that were just very under-explained and just not very intuitive.
The characters where honestly a mess. There's far too many different characters and the multi-POV just kind of confused things. There's 3 total POV characters, with 1 of them having a different name/title seemingly for every single one of their chapters while the other 2 just have their name as the chapter title. That really did not help with trying to work out who was who at the start. Near the end it was far too confusing as everyone piled in and I was just left wondering "am I meant to care about this character?" because except for the main couple characters, since there's so many side characters each one barely had any page time at all and due to that were quite flat.
The relationships are something that bothered me throughout this. There's no chemistry there, and it's honestly quite an abusive relationship. Not only is one centuries older than the other, with that much more knowledge of the world and the other being brought up sheltered, brainwashed and naive, the constant "break and make up" bullshit (to the most extreme levels) was absolutely wild in a really bad way. Again, no chemistry at all, not even any time passed. It was quite literally deeply in love at first sight and nothing else.. Can we please stop having sapphic relationships portrayed with absolutely abusive power dynamics as if they're super romantic and awesome like what the fuck is this trope trend??
The story felt really all over the place as well. Plans kept changing, and honestly even after reading it I still don't even know what the goals of the characters are. They kept changing on a dime and no one really stuck to what they wanted to do at first, or second, or even third. I genuinely have no idea how we even got to the ending because everything was just so convenient. The characters had to do basically not a single thing to progress to whatever their imaginary goal was because they overcame obstacles with no consequences or effort.
More on tropes, I never could understand this trend of using the chosen one trend to attempt to push a message of "people call you weak but you're actually just really strong, work hard and you'll show them how much you can grow!" when the characters holding that message just effortlessly get given god-like powers and are "the strongest anyone has ever seen". This book somehow even manages to take it even further, stronger than gods she becomes it gets honestly quite dumb.
The representation wasn't the best. I honestly was expecting some more from the blind representation but half the book you wouldn't even guess blindness was part of things if you were flicking through it. Tactus in the world sort of(?) replaces sight for redseers but not really. It seems like their sight is just very blurry (though sometimes I think it was described as a black void? also a very confusing concept honestly) and they use tactus to read and "feel" the world around them. But even if very low on tactus and very weak, somehow that doesn't really change much and navigation and all sorts is just like, no issues? There's also a ton of very detailed visual descriptions during Korrinna's POV which was very confusing. POV chapters are meant to be like, from their point of view. And sometimes it is, describing blurred views and such. But most of the time it seems like it's just describing a sighted person's view of the world - even taking the magical powers of tactus into account.
I won't spend too long on this topic but I got concerned about what I was reading when the first like, 20% of the book was just "shady religion that's kinda a cult secretly harvests blood - especially from children - to gain stronger powers to stay in power and control". I'll let you decide how to take that. In this universe, the magic is tied to blood, so blood sacrifices and more, are a constant strong theme. Mix that with the conspiracy shit and secretly taking blood from children and it's just a little too close to real-life conspiracies for my liking.
This took me far too long to read. Despite so much action happening constantly, it was just so incredibly slow paced due to the constant lore-dumping slowing it all down dramatically. I didn't know about the author's connection to Cait when requesting it or when I started reading it. But I'm honestly not surprised. I've really gotta get better on doing more research when requesting books, I just unfortunately got sucked in by both queer and disabled rep - something that's not overly common to have at the same time in books from what I can find...
This was a rough one. Honestly if I didn't write down notes, I probably wouldn't have been able to make a review because it was so forgettable I was forgetting things as I read.
Somehow the book manages to constantly lore dump but explain nothing (I still have very little idea what tactus is, the core main concept of this *entire* universe it seems) - Sometimes it was used interchangeably with blood, sometimes it seemed separate. I also don't believe it was ever actually *really* explained why using tactus rips one cult apart and not others. Also couldn't get that good of a grasp on many other core concepts like the whole "unseeing, unburning, unfeeling". I got unseeing, unfeeling I don't really get the "feeling" part, and unburning I was just incredibly confused on. Like, what? Burning what? "Unlightened" or something would have been closer. Just a ton of really core things like that were just very under-explained and just not very intuitive.
The characters where honestly a mess. There's far too many different characters and the multi-POV just kind of confused things. There's 3 total POV characters, with 1 of them having a different name/title seemingly for every single one of their chapters while the other 2 just have their name as the chapter title. That really did not help with trying to work out who was who at the start. Near the end it was far too confusing as everyone piled in and I was just left wondering "am I meant to care about this character?" because except for the main couple characters, since there's so many side characters each one barely had any page time at all and due to that were quite flat.
The relationships are something that bothered me throughout this. There's no chemistry there, and it's honestly quite an abusive relationship. Not only is one centuries older than the other, with that much more knowledge of the world and the other being brought up sheltered, brainwashed and naive, the constant "break and make up" bullshit (to the most extreme levels) was absolutely wild in a really bad way. Again, no chemistry at all, not even any time passed. It was quite literally deeply in love at first sight and nothing else.. Can we please stop having sapphic relationships portrayed with absolutely abusive power dynamics as if they're super romantic and awesome like what the fuck is this trope trend??
The story felt really all over the place as well. Plans kept changing, and honestly even after reading it I still don't even know what the goals of the characters are. They kept changing on a dime and no one really stuck to what they wanted to do at first, or second, or even third. I genuinely have no idea how we even got to the ending because everything was just so convenient. The characters had to do basically not a single thing to progress to whatever their imaginary goal was because they overcame obstacles with no consequences or effort.
More on tropes, I never could understand this trend of using the chosen one trend to attempt to push a message of "people call you weak but you're actually just really strong, work hard and you'll show them how much you can grow!" when the characters holding that message just effortlessly get given god-like powers and are "the strongest anyone has ever seen". This book somehow even manages to take it even further, stronger than gods she becomes it gets honestly quite dumb.
The representation wasn't the best. I honestly was expecting some more from the blind representation but half the book you wouldn't even guess blindness was part of things if you were flicking through it. Tactus in the world sort of(?) replaces sight for redseers but not really. It seems like their sight is just very blurry (though sometimes I think it was described as a black void? also a very confusing concept honestly) and they use tactus to read and "feel" the world around them. But even if very low on tactus and very weak, somehow that doesn't really change much and navigation and all sorts is just like, no issues? There's also a ton of very detailed visual descriptions during Korrinna's POV which was very confusing. POV chapters are meant to be like, from their point of view. And sometimes it is, describing blurred views and such. But most of the time it seems like it's just describing a sighted person's view of the world - even taking the magical powers of tactus into account.
I won't spend too long on this topic but I got concerned about what I was reading when the first like, 20% of the book was just "shady religion that's kinda a cult secretly harvests blood - especially from children - to gain stronger powers to stay in power and control". I'll let you decide how to take that. In this universe, the magic is tied to blood, so blood sacrifices and more, are a constant strong theme. Mix that with the conspiracy shit and secretly taking blood from children and it's just a little too close to real-life conspiracies for my liking.
This took me far too long to read. Despite so much action happening constantly, it was just so incredibly slow paced due to the constant lore-dumping slowing it all down dramatically. I didn't know about the author's connection to Cait when requesting it or when I started reading it. But I'm honestly not surprised. I've really gotta get better on doing more research when requesting books, I just unfortunately got sucked in by both queer and disabled rep - something that's not overly common to have at the same time in books from what I can find...
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Gore, and Body horror
Moderate: Murder, Medical content, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Torture
Minor: Slavery, Child death, and Cursing
Gore and body horror mainly focuses on skin and fingernails. Constant graphic descriptions all throughout the book countless times.