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harebell 's review for:
Sister, Maiden, Monster
by Lucy A. Snyder
I wanted to love this book, but all this book did was leave me pissed off and disturbed, and not in the way I was expecting to be disturbed.
I love Eldritch horror, I love body horror, I love (fictional!) fucked-up morally unsound gay sex and relationships. I was SO INTO THIS! While reading it!
And then two things happen:
1) The author invokes 14-year-old victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone, a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer, by name, in the most dehumanizing, stigmatizing way you possibly can. The PoV character is comparing herself and the things she wants to do to others, for her own sexual gratification, to what Dahmer did to this child, who was ultimately murdered after sexual torture. I will not transcribe the words used in the book, but it did include describing Sinthasomphone "bleeding from his ass."
This added nothing to the story, the narrative, or the character. You could remove that entire paragraph and nothing would be changed at all regarding the paragraphs before or after it. Why was it included? Extreme edginess for edginess' sake? The only impression this left me with is that the author saw a story of an extremely violent, racist pedophilic murder and thought it'd be funny to use it to enhance the grimdark shock-factor of her novel.
2) There is one (1) entire implied trans character in the entire book. This implied trans character is a character introduced as a cisgender man, and giving one (1) very brief sentence about how the PoV character gets the feeling he "hates being in a male body." That's it. Then that implied-trans character attempts to murder the PoV character, gets violently murdered by her, she orgasms from his murder, and that's the end of it.
You could remove that line about his possible gender dysphoria and nothing would be changed. There's no other reference to trans people existing in the entire book, beyond the author sometimes throwing the word "cis" before man and woman. What did that possibly add to the character? All I saw as a trans reader was one of the most common transphobic tropes- the crazed, violent trans woman who has sex/relationship issues- and then the usual treatment of trans characters: being the only one in the entire cast, then killed off with no emotional fanfare and immediately discarded by the narrative.
I was enjoying it for 50-60% of the story until I hit these. I stopped reading it at 50% of the way in because of these. These two points are so short in the grand scheme of the story, but so thoughtlessly handled that they soured the entire book for me and make me regret picking it up at all.
I love Eldritch horror, I love body horror, I love (fictional!) fucked-up morally unsound gay sex and relationships. I was SO INTO THIS! While reading it!
And then two things happen:
1) The author invokes 14-year-old victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone, a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer, by name, in the most dehumanizing, stigmatizing way you possibly can. The PoV character is comparing herself and the things she wants to do to others, for her own sexual gratification, to what Dahmer did to this child, who was ultimately murdered after sexual torture. I will not transcribe the words used in the book, but it did include describing Sinthasomphone "bleeding from his ass."
This added nothing to the story, the narrative, or the character. You could remove that entire paragraph and nothing would be changed at all regarding the paragraphs before or after it. Why was it included? Extreme edginess for edginess' sake? The only impression this left me with is that the author saw a story of an extremely violent, racist pedophilic murder and thought it'd be funny to use it to enhance the grimdark shock-factor of her novel.
2) There is one (1) entire implied trans character in the entire book. This implied trans character is a character introduced as a cisgender man, and giving one (1) very brief sentence about how the PoV character gets the feeling he "hates being in a male body." That's it. Then that implied-trans character attempts to murder the PoV character, gets violently murdered by her, she orgasms from his murder, and that's the end of it.
You could remove that line about his possible gender dysphoria and nothing would be changed. There's no other reference to trans people existing in the entire book, beyond the author sometimes throwing the word "cis" before man and woman. What did that possibly add to the character? All I saw as a trans reader was one of the most common transphobic tropes- the crazed, violent trans woman who has sex/relationship issues- and then the usual treatment of trans characters: being the only one in the entire cast, then killed off with no emotional fanfare and immediately discarded by the narrative.
I was enjoying it for 50-60% of the story until I hit these. I stopped reading it at 50% of the way in because of these. These two points are so short in the grand scheme of the story, but so thoughtlessly handled that they soured the entire book for me and make me regret picking it up at all.