A review by inuyasha
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

0.5

the consequences of letting terminally online gen xers publish books. also proof that a lot of people who pride themselves on being (white) feminists don't actually know anyone irl who belong to other disenfranchised demographics they then write about to give themselves a pat on the back. 

this book made me so mad that i finished it in one day out of spite and dog eared every page that made me mad, i've tried my best to shorten it to the list below: 

1. the three separate POVs have barely any distinction between voices, and there is a persistent problem of us having to watch these characters learn information we already learned in a previous section - which is especially tiring because the only way actual real expository info if given to you in this novel is through characters watching a youtube video from a doctor. huge, dialogue walls of info dumps from a youtube video. where is your imagination lucy..........

2. the writing in this is extremely plain and uninspired (although some of the body horror/gore was fun) which made it even worse when snyder would attempt at something resembling prose:
<blockquote>"You ready?" Betty's question creaks like the hinge of a forgotten gate. 
"Absolutely." My own voice is the dry fluttering of moth wings.</blockquote>

3. Despite this being marketed as a lesbian erotic horror the author simply cannot resist boldly proclaiming how biphobic all lesbians are!! which makes me wonder how many lesbians in the Real Life Actual World this author knows. i doubled down on this question when on the same page about lesbians being biphobic, the author describes how the sex worker character got her mostly lesbian clientele by advertising at "lesbian bars and such" - like the author can't even think of any actual spaces lesbians hang out at. 

4.

making your character that is essentially patient zero for infecting most of the main characters in this book with the virus that is bringing forth the apocalypse be a closeted trans woman whose only evidence for being trans is that they are a man who "likes to get pegged" and can only comfortably live out these sexual fantasies with a SWer and not his fiance is nuts. so tone deaf, such an oldddddddd stale boring transphobic caricature. then to have this character go through a eldritch body horror transformation where he is horrified as his voice gets monstrously deeper and more masculine is like..... so mean spirited i don't even have the words. awful.

--> 4a. there is also this weird scene early on when erin (first pov chara) sees savannah (second pov character) for the first time and describes her as having "so much makeup on she looks like a drag queen" which i also found really strange and like.... a little suspect? there are almost no other physical descriptions of the characters given - we know erin has blue eyes, savannah has blond hair - but that's about it. if this was meant to be indicative of erin's personality, someone who is maybe kind of queerphobic and judgy it didn't come across that way bc she's not like that anywhere else.... and we are also given no indication that savannah is that glammed up or flamboyant elsewhere. it was just a strange thing to say in addition to the incidental transphobia above?

5. honestly most of my problems in this boil down to the sex worker POV character, savannah. her section is the shortest, and most of it is padded up with diatribes about feminism or being pro-sex work in a way that adds nothing to the novel and also makes me confused about exactly what kind of book lucy snyder thinks she's writing because of points i'll address later on. while i wouldn't say any POV character in this is "developed", savannah is by far the least realized one, and her true only character trait is being so turned on by violence that it makes her orgasm. sure. hypersexual sex worker is definitely a very fun thing to explore and not at all dull and uninventive. 

even in non-sexual instances, the writing for her says stuff like: "curiosity itches at me like a yeast infection." jesus christ. we get it. you are soooo edgy. your sex worker POV can only talk about cum, sex, and anything involving genitalia. you're insanely reductive!!!

6. also, for how much sex there is in this book.... none of it is written in any meaningful way. i appreciate the cannibalistic lesbian sex of the first part, but it's not written well. the first sex scene mentions king princess playing twice and is so awkward that the real horror of this novel was my second hand embarrassment. 

7. this author writes like your worst cringe millennial or gen x friend who is like 7-8 meme cycles behind you. a literal line in this, when a character is worried about the size of a man's penis she's about to have sex with:
<blockquote>"But when he undid the fly of his cassock and levered his dick out, I had me a <i>concern</i>."</blockquote>
like. give me a fucking break. the next page of this also has this same character say she deserves her "nut". there's a few other old memes referenced in this, including a character saying she hopes the person who has murdered her sister, her brother-in-law, and their multiple young children "dies in a fire" and then later feels guilty about it because it's the "meanest thing she's ever said." these people aren't real!! they are cartoon characters!! 
i just can't stress how this outdated, contemporary, try-hard humor tone does not nicely merge with the high-science, religious eldritch horror background it's up against. it's grating. 

8.

there is only one character in this entire novel that's black, whose dialogue is sometimes written in a jamaican accent, sometimes not, like the author couldn't decide. she is also brutally murdered bc of course! her ghost haunts her murderer and they have a weird meta discussion about it, before the ghost of the murdered black woman seemingly offends the character and we are given another half-page long rant: 
<blockquote>"Easy, huh? Easy to get me distracted and sympathetic? To come to me crying your white woman tears?" She spits for emphasis. "Just so you can betray and murder the one Black friend you had in your entire life." 
That hits a weak spot in my armor, and I don't have a comeback. "Yeah. Sorry."
"People are counting on me! And now I can't help anyone ever again. Your... your moral relativism is disgusting. And so is your work."
"Seriously? My working in a brothel is not the problem here. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of consensual sex." (this continues on for six more sentences and the racism is dropped)</blockquote>
this is especially funny bc this author advertised this as an "antiracist cosmic horror", bc it uses eldritch elements and well... we all know about lovecraft! except, can you really argue you are doing anything better than lovecraft did when your black character exists only to be murdered? lmao

9. while the dialogue in this book is cringy, the exposition is not much better. the actionable parts especially are insanely bad:
<blockquote>"But I woke up in a hurry when I heard several people toward the front of the store scream, followed by the sound of something large smashing through a front window, followed by even more screaming."</blockquote>
ah.... thank you..... that was so riveting............ so fun to read!!

10. throughout the first two parts of the novel, both characters make random asides i mentioned earlier that are just kind of general feminist.... well... rants? erin goes on for a page about wage gaps, savannah endlessly goes on about being judged for being a sex worker, etc. it happens so much i wondered if the horror of this was going to culminate in some kind of feminist metaphor, only for the final part of this to be

both erin and savannah holding a woman prisoner and forcing her to give birth against her will. okay. sure. yay! feminism!