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A review by kaoskardinal
The Fifth Horseman by Freida Kilmari
2.0
Am I missing something here?
I see all of these glowing reviews and I just don't get it. If you've seen any of my highlights with notes, you'll know that I spent most of the book muttering "wtf..." and not in the fun way.
I find this weird disconnect from the impression you get of who the MC is in the prologue to who she is after she wakes up without her memories. As the story progressed, I started to feel like she's just fucking disturbed and needs to be inpatient somewhere with a good therapist and some Haloperidol. She's violent and overreacts to things and then gets all " I just know that nobody likes me, boo hoo" and I was having none of it. The love interests and secondary characters are, frankly, the only thing that saved this book for me. The were unique and interesting and it floors me that the same person wrote them whereas the MC is such a shit show.
The nail in the coffin for me is that this is somehow billed as a story about a gender fluid person and I'm sorry, being able to shift into a guy because of a quirk of your magic does not make you gender fluid. There was nothing else about the book that even indicated that she felt at odds with her body or anything of note about how she chose to express her gender. Nothing. Just pissed off temper tantrum and POOF I'm a dude. I would love to hear from an actually gender fluid person how their own experience relates to this, because nothing I've read or heard from others sound like this is even close to the experience. In addition, there were some old fashioned and frankly harmful gender stereotypes and slut-shaming and a bunch of other stuff (see spoiler highlights) that I just thought were gross and not a good example of what this genre has evolved to be.
I will not be continuing with this series or this author. I granted 1 star because of the uniqueness of the world-building. Would that she had spent similar time on creating a remotely likeable heroine.
I see all of these glowing reviews and I just don't get it. If you've seen any of my highlights with notes, you'll know that I spent most of the book muttering "wtf..." and not in the fun way.
I find this weird disconnect from the impression you get of who the MC is in the prologue to who she is after she wakes up without her memories. As the story progressed, I started to feel like she's just fucking disturbed and needs to be inpatient somewhere with a good therapist and some Haloperidol. She's violent and overreacts to things and then gets all " I just know that nobody likes me, boo hoo" and I was having none of it. The love interests and secondary characters are, frankly, the only thing that saved this book for me. The were unique and interesting and it floors me that the same person wrote them whereas the MC is such a shit show.
The nail in the coffin for me is that this is somehow billed as a story about
I will not be continuing with this series or this author. I granted 1 star because of the uniqueness of the world-building. Would that she had spent similar time on creating a remotely likeable heroine.