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A review by dtaylorbooks
Shatterwing by Donna Maree Hanson
3.0
This was a NetGalley find that I was on the border on when it came to requesting it but did it anyway. It intrigued me just enough to hit that button.
Well. I’ll start by saying I liked the concept of SHATTERWING and I liked the world that Hanson started to develop here, rather barren, Mad Max without the leather, people reduced to baser instincts, all while watching a moon continue to fragment and destroy them. There’s a lot to work with here and it’s what really got me through the book. I liked the concept of creating this drink called dragon wine that had healing properties, on which humanity hinged itself. I liked the notion that Salinda is the last bastion of knowledge in the world, carrying a secret she must keep or risk her life all the while being a slave toiling in a vineyard. She’s a great character with a pretty level head thanks to a ton of training and she really knocks Brill into place, who’s a spoiled little brat that doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into. But there was a really big cloud blocking out the shine with this book.
It appears that the only way the stock character villains can subjugate people and put them in their place is by rampant sexual assault i.e. rape by a myriad of means, sodomy, fondling of someone in a catatonic state. It was disturbing and the more I read it the more it seemed like it was rape for rape’s sake. Look. I’m all for putting characters through the wringer. It’s when an author does that that their true personalities start to shine through. But every major character whose POV I read from was raped in this book. All three of them, two female and one male. And all for . . . rape? There are other means of torture and humiliation and dehumanization but all there is in this world is sexual assault and it really hurt the book for me. I know the author was trying to show how brutal of a world this place was but really, fade to black a little bit or get more creative with your torture techniques. This was excessive.
Another thing that really bugged me was how fainting damsels the women were. Yeah, sure, they had smart mouths and they were able to survive in the world up until this point but they suffered the most and required rescuing of the male order from every scenario. Held down by men and rescued by them. It’s a rather odd position to be in when reading a book where the two female protagonists are supposedly stand on their own as strong women. However they were rather shrinking and faint when the crap started to get stuck in the fan blades.
What the blurb doesn’t touch on in Part 2 of SHATTERWING and I think that’s doing it a disservice. The female protagonist’s name in Part 2 escapes me at the moment but I liked her as much as Salinda (minus the rape) and they’re two similar characters that I could get on board with. Not to mention it’s the other half to this story and once you’re in to Part 2 it starts to wrap around itself and a bigger picture starts to form. To mention one part and not the other is lacking, I think.
The underground guy who emerges after over 1,000 years of stasis is interesting too. Again, his name escapes me too and it’s a part of the story only touched on but it made the world a bit bigger and a bit fuller beyond the rape wasteland that surrounds people in this world.
I like this world with its moons and Shatterwing slowly dying and the dragons. Of course the dragons! And the magic and the blooming history. But the sexual assault. My god. Once would have been sufficient to paint the world in a solid picture. But three times and it’s just rape porn and I’m really hesitant now to read further in the series because I don’t want to read more rapes. Show me gore and war and fighting and even various degrees of torture but it’s only just rape here, and abject women shaming (severe Madonna/whore issues in this book from an in-world societal standpoint) and it just kills it for me. I just don’t want to read that.
2 1/2
Well. I’ll start by saying I liked the concept of SHATTERWING and I liked the world that Hanson started to develop here, rather barren, Mad Max without the leather, people reduced to baser instincts, all while watching a moon continue to fragment and destroy them. There’s a lot to work with here and it’s what really got me through the book. I liked the concept of creating this drink called dragon wine that had healing properties, on which humanity hinged itself. I liked the notion that Salinda is the last bastion of knowledge in the world, carrying a secret she must keep or risk her life all the while being a slave toiling in a vineyard. She’s a great character with a pretty level head thanks to a ton of training and she really knocks Brill into place, who’s a spoiled little brat that doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into. But there was a really big cloud blocking out the shine with this book.
It appears that the only way the stock character villains can subjugate people and put them in their place is by rampant sexual assault i.e. rape by a myriad of means, sodomy, fondling of someone in a catatonic state. It was disturbing and the more I read it the more it seemed like it was rape for rape’s sake. Look. I’m all for putting characters through the wringer. It’s when an author does that that their true personalities start to shine through. But every major character whose POV I read from was raped in this book. All three of them, two female and one male. And all for . . . rape? There are other means of torture and humiliation and dehumanization but all there is in this world is sexual assault and it really hurt the book for me. I know the author was trying to show how brutal of a world this place was but really, fade to black a little bit or get more creative with your torture techniques. This was excessive.
Another thing that really bugged me was how fainting damsels the women were. Yeah, sure, they had smart mouths and they were able to survive in the world up until this point but they suffered the most and required rescuing of the male order from every scenario. Held down by men and rescued by them. It’s a rather odd position to be in when reading a book where the two female protagonists are supposedly stand on their own as strong women. However they were rather shrinking and faint when the crap started to get stuck in the fan blades.
What the blurb doesn’t touch on in Part 2 of SHATTERWING and I think that’s doing it a disservice. The female protagonist’s name in Part 2 escapes me at the moment but I liked her as much as Salinda (minus the rape) and they’re two similar characters that I could get on board with. Not to mention it’s the other half to this story and once you’re in to Part 2 it starts to wrap around itself and a bigger picture starts to form. To mention one part and not the other is lacking, I think.
The underground guy who emerges after over 1,000 years of stasis is interesting too. Again, his name escapes me too and it’s a part of the story only touched on but it made the world a bit bigger and a bit fuller beyond the rape wasteland that surrounds people in this world.
I like this world with its moons and Shatterwing slowly dying and the dragons. Of course the dragons! And the magic and the blooming history. But the sexual assault. My god. Once would have been sufficient to paint the world in a solid picture. But three times and it’s just rape porn and I’m really hesitant now to read further in the series because I don’t want to read more rapes. Show me gore and war and fighting and even various degrees of torture but it’s only just rape here, and abject women shaming (severe Madonna/whore issues in this book from an in-world societal standpoint) and it just kills it for me. I just don’t want to read that.
2 1/2