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A review by thebakersbooks
Gravemaidens by Kelly Coon
2.0
2/5 stars — poorly executed and historically accurate to a fault
Sometimes, a book is just bad. From unimaginative title to emotionally forced ending, Gravemaidens was a massive disappointment. I'm new enough to requesting ARCs that I feel it's important I finish and review every book I receive from a publisher, otherwise this would've been a DNF around a third of the way through. As it stands, we'll classify this as an honorary DNF.
Let's be clear on two things. First: this wasn't an instance of 'not my cup of tea.' The premise of a teenage healer protecting her family in ancient Sumer is what caught my interest in the first place; it was the execution that lost me. Second: I do DNF books that are actively harmful or problematic. For me, this one was borderline for a couple of reasons, which I'll discuss below. There was no homophobia (no queer characters at all) and it was a case of Schrodinger's racism—either nothing was racist or all of it was, in a very insidious way. Again, I'll get to that in a second.
I stopped and restarted Gravemaidens twice, each time thinking it wasn't resonating with me at that moment or that I was being unfair in my judgment of the characterization and prose because I was reading it on the heels of a much better book. It turns out the writing was the problem after all.
The main character is somehow the only person in her whole society who has a problem with the ritual sacrifice of three beautiful maidens who are buried with each ruling lugal when he dies. It's like the "not like other girls" trope but magnified—not only is Kammani "better" than the other girls in Alu because she doesn't want to get all prettied up and live in luxury for a few weeks before the honor of dying, she's better than everyone because she's the only one who sees the deaths as pointless and horrifying. Kammani's self-righteous frustration and the way she looks down on everyone too oblivious or frivolous to see things her way makes her impossible to relate to. Add in lackluster dialogue peppered with anachronisms (using modern slang can work in historical fiction, but it didn't here) and choppy prose and we were already off to a bad start. Also, the phrase "a turn of the sundial" pops up often, and it frustrates me because as far as I know a) sundials don't themselves turn and b) a circuit of the sun around the dial equals the time from sunrise to sunset, not one hour as it seems to indicate in the story.
Then there's the way the author treats romance and sexuality. Something's clearly off from the beginning because Kammani is written as repeatedly envying/admiring/judging "the womanly form" of her fifteen-year-old sister. She mentions Nanaea's 'curves' half a dozen times or more throughout the book. Also, Kammani is perpetually admonishing her flighty best friend for kissing men. She has a relationship with Dagan, but conflates marriage with being imprisoned to care for a husband and children and shies away from committing to him despite several cringy descriptions of 'her body wanting his' or something to that effect. That's...fine, if unpleasant to read, on its own, except that the uncomfortable romantic subplot is given equal emotional weight to the main plot, which is literally about human sacrifice. Worst of all, there's a hint that maybe the author's going to shoehorn a love triangle into the next bookafter Kammani had to kiss the guard Nasu near the end of the story .
This is speculation, but I think things went wrong because the author was too invested in historical accuracy. Some of the problems arising from this are innocuous but annoying: family members referring to each other as 'Brother' and 'Sister'; repeated use of parents' professions for surnames leading to Kammani calling her love interest "Farmer's Son" half the time. Others, though? The author states in a post-book note that she grew up learning about human sacrifice in the Middle East "seven days a week" in a fundamentalist church and school. Through that lens, the lack of fictional reimagination present in the human sacrifice aspect of this book's plot is more than flat storytelling—it's religio-cultural bigotry applied to an ancient civilization. There's a scene where a woman has her mouth smashed with a brick for a minor crime. The author notes that this was something that actually happened in that historical setting. In another scene, the main character is sexually assaulted by a member of the ruling class. No doubt the author could provide a source for something similar happening at some point in Sumerian history, but to write about it so graphically now is unnecessary. To summarize, I don't feel this author had a place writing this particular story in the present political climate, and the way she did so was off-putting at best.
I want more genre fiction set in the Middle East, but not if it's anything like Gravemaidens. I don't recommend this book to anyone.
Content warnings: graphic on-page parental death, infant/child death, mention of human sacrifice, on-page sexual assault
** I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. **
Sometimes, a book is just bad. From unimaginative title to emotionally forced ending, Gravemaidens was a massive disappointment. I'm new enough to requesting ARCs that I feel it's important I finish and review every book I receive from a publisher, otherwise this would've been a DNF around a third of the way through. As it stands, we'll classify this as an honorary DNF.
Let's be clear on two things. First: this wasn't an instance of 'not my cup of tea.' The premise of a teenage healer protecting her family in ancient Sumer is what caught my interest in the first place; it was the execution that lost me. Second: I do DNF books that are actively harmful or problematic. For me, this one was borderline for a couple of reasons, which I'll discuss below. There was no homophobia (no queer characters at all) and it was a case of Schrodinger's racism—either nothing was racist or all of it was, in a very insidious way. Again, I'll get to that in a second.
I stopped and restarted Gravemaidens twice, each time thinking it wasn't resonating with me at that moment or that I was being unfair in my judgment of the characterization and prose because I was reading it on the heels of a much better book. It turns out the writing was the problem after all.
The main character is somehow the only person in her whole society who has a problem with the ritual sacrifice of three beautiful maidens who are buried with each ruling lugal when he dies. It's like the "not like other girls" trope but magnified—not only is Kammani "better" than the other girls in Alu because she doesn't want to get all prettied up and live in luxury for a few weeks before the honor of dying, she's better than everyone because she's the only one who sees the deaths as pointless and horrifying. Kammani's self-righteous frustration and the way she looks down on everyone too oblivious or frivolous to see things her way makes her impossible to relate to. Add in lackluster dialogue peppered with anachronisms (using modern slang can work in historical fiction, but it didn't here) and choppy prose and we were already off to a bad start. Also, the phrase "a turn of the sundial" pops up often, and it frustrates me because as far as I know a) sundials don't themselves turn and b) a circuit of the sun around the dial equals the time from sunrise to sunset, not one hour as it seems to indicate in the story.
Then there's the way the author treats romance and sexuality. Something's clearly off from the beginning because Kammani is written as repeatedly envying/admiring/judging "the womanly form" of her fifteen-year-old sister. She mentions Nanaea's 'curves' half a dozen times or more throughout the book. Also, Kammani is perpetually admonishing her flighty best friend for kissing men. She has a relationship with Dagan, but conflates marriage with being imprisoned to care for a husband and children and shies away from committing to him despite several cringy descriptions of 'her body wanting his' or something to that effect. That's...fine, if unpleasant to read, on its own, except that the uncomfortable romantic subplot is given equal emotional weight to the main plot, which is literally about human sacrifice. Worst of all, there's a hint that maybe the author's going to shoehorn a love triangle into the next book
This is speculation, but I think things went wrong because the author was too invested in historical accuracy. Some of the problems arising from this are innocuous but annoying: family members referring to each other as 'Brother' and 'Sister'; repeated use of parents' professions for surnames leading to Kammani calling her love interest "Farmer's Son" half the time. Others, though? The author states in a post-book note that she grew up learning about human sacrifice in the Middle East "seven days a week" in a fundamentalist church and school. Through that lens, the lack of fictional reimagination present in the human sacrifice aspect of this book's plot is more than flat storytelling—it's religio-cultural bigotry applied to an ancient civilization. There's a scene where a woman has her mouth smashed with a brick for a minor crime. The author notes that this was something that actually happened in that historical setting. In another scene, the main character is sexually assaulted by a member of the ruling class. No doubt the author could provide a source for something similar happening at some point in Sumerian history, but to write about it so graphically now is unnecessary. To summarize, I don't feel this author had a place writing this particular story in the present political climate, and the way she did so was off-putting at best.
I want more genre fiction set in the Middle East, but not if it's anything like Gravemaidens. I don't recommend this book to anyone.
Content warnings: graphic on-page parental death, infant/child death, mention of human sacrifice, on-page sexual assault
** I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. **