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A review by lilkstew
Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels by Katie West, Jasmine Elliot, Kristen J Sollee
slow-paced
2.75
Meh. This book was fine. The premise is super cool, but I felt that the essays fell flat. Some of them were real knock-outs (particularly "Garden," "Buzzcut Season," "The Future Is Coming for You," and "Ritualizing My Humanity"), but so many others were not that great. Many were dull. Several were trite.
A lot of the essays felt repetitive, which isn't unheard of for an essay collection, but it felt poorly edited. After the seventh nearly identical essay on beauty, I was bored. The essays also contradicted each other to a strange degree. Again, this isn't uncommon for essay collections; after all, many different authors contributed. It's good to show multiple perspectives and counterpoints, but it didn't really work with this collection. Let's take the subject of beauty for example. A bunch of essays talked about beauty, but they all used the same talking points. One essay would talk about how beauty isn't empowering, the next would claim that beauty is empowering, and then the cycle would repeat. The essays didn't bring up a lot of new points; the main points of an essay on empowering beauty would be the counterpoints of the essay about beauty not being empowering. The essays lost freshness and bite and insight; they were predictable.
The editors did a great job explaining and including content warnings, though.
A lot of the essays felt repetitive, which isn't unheard of for an essay collection, but it felt poorly edited. After the seventh nearly identical essay on beauty, I was bored. The essays also contradicted each other to a strange degree. Again, this isn't uncommon for essay collections; after all, many different authors contributed. It's good to show multiple perspectives and counterpoints, but it didn't really work with this collection. Let's take the subject of beauty for example. A bunch of essays talked about beauty, but they all used the same talking points. One essay would talk about how beauty isn't empowering, the next would claim that beauty is empowering, and then the cycle would repeat. The essays didn't bring up a lot of new points; the main points of an essay on empowering beauty would be the counterpoints of the essay about beauty not being empowering. The essays lost freshness and bite and insight; they were predictable.
The editors did a great job explaining and including content warnings, though.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Transphobia, and Violence