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A review by fridge_brilliance
The Grass King's Concubine by Kari Sperring
3.0
my short verdict: this is a marxist manifesto that masquerades as a faerie fantasy
let's play a game. try to guess what items from the list below were not in the book:
- a lesmis arc, complete with riots of factory workers & debates over marxist alienation, leading naturally to sex in the slums that result in a touching mesalliance with a guy you unknowingly wrote letters to when you were five
- zombie apocalypse
- questionably sentient bees (jupiter ascending war flashbacks intensify)
- ferrets in love with a priest
- local ferrets turn into women to rescue priests
- printing press triggers faerie court downfall
- raining words
- the bees turning into a priest, and vice versa
- water conduits
- land & water rights
correct answer is, all of this is in the book. and the book is very long. and it's weirdly paced. i can't even explain to myself how was it that i actually read all of it, what made me follow through on this. first it was confusion, then it was mild interest in dysfunctional squabbling faerie lords, and at the final stretch it was this confused wanting of explanations, because what we had didn't make a full picture. or rather, didn't make one satisfyingly and in a way that would justify why i read it, why it took 495 printed pages to tell the story, how the hell the backstory explains the resolution, and most importantly, why the hell grass king is so useless and why the book needs a titular concubine.
in the interest of fairness, what this book did well was create the feeling, the headspace of otherness - especially convincing in juxtaposition and sometimes direct clash with a regular human's way of seeing and rationalizing things. the faerie cadre - the highest ranking nobility, if you will - were of most interest to me, as beings of magic limited by the very traits that they were made to represent, that defines in them, and in particular - the not!haephestus craftsman/metalworker and his disastrous and occasionally resentful pet projects. it's just that - the headspace of two completely crazy ferret twins obsessed with a man is not something i'd like to ever read again about, especially not on 495 pages .___.
let's play a game. try to guess what items from the list below were not in the book:
- a lesmis arc, complete with riots of factory workers & debates over marxist alienation, leading naturally to sex in the slums that result in a touching mesalliance with a guy you unknowingly wrote letters to when you were five
- zombie apocalypse
- questionably sentient bees (jupiter ascending war flashbacks intensify)
- ferrets in love with a priest
- local ferrets turn into women to rescue priests
- printing press triggers faerie court downfall
- raining words
- the bees turning into a priest, and vice versa
- water conduits
- land & water rights
correct answer is, all of this is in the book. and the book is very long. and it's weirdly paced. i can't even explain to myself how was it that i actually read all of it, what made me follow through on this. first it was confusion, then it was mild interest in dysfunctional squabbling faerie lords, and at the final stretch it was this confused wanting of explanations, because what we had didn't make a full picture. or rather, didn't make one satisfyingly and in a way that would justify why i read it, why it took 495 printed pages to tell the story, how the hell the backstory explains the resolution, and most importantly, why the hell grass king is so useless and why the book needs a titular concubine.
in the interest of fairness, what this book did well was create the feeling, the headspace of otherness - especially convincing in juxtaposition and sometimes direct clash with a regular human's way of seeing and rationalizing things. the faerie cadre - the highest ranking nobility, if you will - were of most interest to me, as beings of magic limited by the very traits that they were made to represent, that defines in them, and in particular - the not!haephestus craftsman/metalworker and his disastrous and occasionally resentful pet projects. it's just that - the headspace of two completely crazy ferret twins obsessed with a man is not something i'd like to ever read again about, especially not on 495 pages .___.