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A review by stephen_reads
Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
0.25
Amateurish writing full of weak metaphors and an excess of adverbs.
There’s an interesting hook, but the author doesn’t focus on it. You think you’re getting a dystopian sci-fi but really you’re getting the domestic troubles of a boring and unlikeable married couple. The stunted and unrealistic dialogue between them is downright painful at times.
At one point the characters eat paneer by itself as a meal (lmao). The author credits the increase of anti-asian racism during the pandemic as an inspiration for their writing but it’s obvious the main asian character’s existence in the book is tokenistic at best (they’re not even east asian so I don’t understand the pandemic mention regarding this in the acknowledgements at all, I think the author just wanted some brownie points).
The treatment of this character is an embarrassing display of a white queer person desperately trying to be inclusive and intersectional but failing hard. Some of the comments made about race (particularly the way it intersects with academia) feel like stabs in the dark.
The quality of the writing is just so poor. “Her hopeful hopelessness”, “A spark fizzed in her nerves”, “running made her feel good”.
Laughably bad and fanfictionesque. You can skip this one.
There’s an interesting hook, but the author doesn’t focus on it. You think you’re getting a dystopian sci-fi but really you’re getting the domestic troubles of a boring and unlikeable married couple. The stunted and unrealistic dialogue between them is downright painful at times.
At one point the characters eat paneer by itself as a meal (lmao). The author credits the increase of anti-asian racism during the pandemic as an inspiration for their writing but it’s obvious the main asian character’s existence in the book is tokenistic at best (they’re not even east asian so I don’t understand the pandemic mention regarding this in the acknowledgements at all, I think the author just wanted some brownie points).
The treatment of this character is an embarrassing display of a white queer person desperately trying to be inclusive and intersectional but failing hard. Some of the comments made about race (particularly the way it intersects with academia) feel like stabs in the dark.
The quality of the writing is just so poor. “Her hopeful hopelessness”, “A spark fizzed in her nerves”, “running made her feel good”.
Laughably bad and fanfictionesque. You can skip this one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death