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theatreofcruelty 's review for:
Fierce Kingdom
by Gin Phillips
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Honestly I still don't know how to feel about this book properly. It was written by a white woman from Alabama with individualistic, selfish ideals that show through the book quite strongly whether you like it or not once you are educated enough to know what to look for.
I found myself constantly bored, irritated or even shocked by the casual racist bomb in the middle of the book only for it to be completely ignored for the rest of the plot as if we're supposed to see it and think it's normal to think about brown people like that, namely brown men. The main character both infantilizes and over-grows (if that's a term) the main antagonists. While the book itself wants us to see some semblance of humanity in one of them, who is coded to be gay and autistic and be unaware of it.
The book is lauded as fast paced and tense and impossible to put down but I had to force myself to listen to this piece of white literature like one does with a homework because I just couldn't enjoy it. Joann the main character is insufferably impossible to even sympathize with. She thinks of her neglectful and abusive mother, her abusive father, her nice uncle, and you see her genuinely try to be a good mother but she is not a good *person* and those two things are constantly colliding in the story. I understand people act a certain way during extreme stress so I won't touch that. But I honestly genuinely didn't enjoy Joan's sudden racism or her weird as hell approach to a literal child trying to have a conversation when it's herself and her own neglectful actions that lead to their near death.
Incredibly emotional scenes take place between the teacher and Robbie but you never hear of it again after it happens. And it is never addressed again by the end, in fact it's treated as if it never happened. And the teacher is just condemned, discarded. We hear she's "surely okay" but is she, author? Or are we to laud and applaud the fact that the main character threw away a black teenage girl for being "loud and obnoxious" and a disabled old woman who could have saved their lives because she was an inconvenience to her and her child? (By the way, she wasn't. She saved their lives. Twice. She's the only reason they made it to the end of the book.)
I have a lot of thoughts about this book and every single one is uncomfortable, unpleasant and full of negativity. Didn't enjoy. But finished it. Whatever man.
I found myself constantly bored, irritated or even shocked by the casual racist bomb in the middle of the book only for it to be completely ignored for the rest of the plot as if we're supposed to see it and think it's normal to think about brown people like that, namely brown men. The main character both infantilizes and over-grows (if that's a term) the main antagonists. While the book itself wants us to see some semblance of humanity in one of them, who is coded to be gay and autistic and be unaware of it.
The book is lauded as fast paced and tense and impossible to put down but I had to force myself to listen to this piece of white literature like one does with a homework because I just couldn't enjoy it. Joann the main character is insufferably impossible to even sympathize with. She thinks of her neglectful and abusive mother, her abusive father, her nice uncle, and you see her genuinely try to be a good mother but she is not a good *person* and those two things are constantly colliding in the story. I understand people act a certain way during extreme stress so I won't touch that. But I honestly genuinely didn't enjoy Joan's sudden racism or her weird as hell approach to a literal child trying to have a conversation when it's herself and her own neglectful actions that lead to their near death.
Incredibly emotional scenes take place between the teacher and Robbie but you never hear of it again after it happens. And it is never addressed again by the end, in fact it's treated as if it never happened. And the teacher is just condemned, discarded. We hear she's "surely okay" but is she, author? Or are we to laud and applaud the fact that the main character threw away a black teenage girl for being "loud and obnoxious" and a disabled old woman who could have saved their lives because she was an inconvenience to her and her child? (By the way, she wasn't. She saved their lives. Twice. She's the only reason they made it to the end of the book.)
I have a lot of thoughts about this book and every single one is uncomfortable, unpleasant and full of negativity. Didn't enjoy. But finished it. Whatever man.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death