A review by awildbrady
The White Road by Lynn Flewelling

  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.75

 I first began reading the Nightrunner series as a teen in the aughts, and have been rereading them over the last couple of years. In the course of this reread, I’ve really had to grapple with the racism in the text in a way I wasn’t aware of as a child. 

Almost every group of people who are not Skalan or Aurenfaie are described in terribly racist terms. In this book, the descriptions of the Retha’noi is particularly egregious. Flewelling at one point does mentioned that they were colonized out of their land, but still uses racist tropes to describe their every action. 

Not only do they completely slaughter a group of indigenous people (who Flewelling, of course, made attack the group first), but they looted their sacred magical objects afterwards. That really turned my stomach. Alec described killing them as like killing children. How infantilizing! 


I have a real soft spot in my heart for this series as one of the first queer things I could get my hand on outside of manga. But readers going into the Nightrunner series should definitely be aware of the not insignificant racism that seeps throughout the entire series. 
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