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inuyasha's reviews
338 reviews
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder
this book made me so mad that i finished it in one day out of spite and dog eared every page that made me mad, i've tried my best to shorten it to the list below:
1. the three separate POVs have barely any distinction between voices, and there is a persistent problem of us having to watch these characters learn information we already learned in a previous section - which is especially tiring because the only way actual real expository info if given to you in this novel is through characters watching a youtube video from a doctor. huge, dialogue walls of info dumps from a youtube video. where is your imagination lucy..........
2. the writing in this is extremely plain and uninspired (although some of the body horror/gore was fun) which made it even worse when snyder would attempt at something resembling prose:
<blockquote>"You ready?" Betty's question creaks like the hinge of a forgotten gate.
"Absolutely." My own voice is the dry fluttering of moth wings.</blockquote>
3. Despite this being marketed as a lesbian erotic horror the author simply cannot resist boldly proclaiming how biphobic all lesbians are!! which makes me wonder how many lesbians in the Real Life Actual World this author knows. i doubled down on this question when on the same page about lesbians being biphobic, the author describes how the sex worker character got her mostly lesbian clientele by advertising at "lesbian bars and such" - like the author can't even think of any actual spaces lesbians hang out at.
4.making your character that is essentially patient zero for infecting most of the main characters in this book with the virus that is bringing forth the apocalypse be a closeted trans woman whose only evidence for being trans is that they are a man who "likes to get pegged" and can only comfortably live out these sexual fantasies with a SWer and not his fiance is nuts. so tone deaf, such an oldddddddd stale boring transphobic caricature. then to have this character go through a eldritch body horror transformation where he is horrified as his voice gets monstrously deeper and more masculine is like..... so mean spirited i don't even have the words. awful.
--> 4a. there is also this weird scene early on when erin (first pov chara) sees savannah (second pov character) for the first time and describes her as having "so much makeup on she looks like a drag queen" which i also found really strange and like.... a little suspect? there are almost no other physical descriptions of the characters given - we know erin has blue eyes, savannah has blond hair - but that's about it. if this was meant to be indicative of erin's personality, someone who is maybe kind of queerphobic and judgy it didn't come across that way bc she's not like that anywhere else.... and we are also given no indication that savannah is that glammed up or flamboyant elsewhere. it was just a strange thing to say in addition to the incidental transphobia above?
5. honestly most of my problems in this boil down to the sex worker POV character, savannah. her section is the shortest, and most of it is padded up with diatribes about feminism or being pro-sex work in a way that adds nothing to the novel and also makes me confused about exactly what kind of book lucy snyder thinks she's writing because of points i'll address later on. while i wouldn't say any POV character in this is "developed", savannah is by far the least realized one, and her true only character trait is being so turned on by violence that it makes her orgasm. sure. hypersexual sex worker is definitely a very fun thing to explore and not at all dull and uninventive.
even in non-sexual instances, the writing for her says stuff like: "curiosity itches at me like a yeast infection." jesus christ. we get it. you are soooo edgy. your sex worker POV can only talk about cum, sex, and anything involving genitalia. you're insanely reductive!!!
6. also, for how much sex there is in this book.... none of it is written in any meaningful way. i appreciate the cannibalistic lesbian sex of the first part, but it's not written well. the first sex scene mentions king princess playing twice and is so awkward that the real horror of this novel was my second hand embarrassment.
7. this author writes like your worst cringe millennial or gen x friend who is like 7-8 meme cycles behind you. a literal line in this, when a character is worried about the size of a man's penis she's about to have sex with:
<blockquote>"But when he undid the fly of his cassock and levered his dick out, I had me a <i>concern</i>."</blockquote>
like. give me a fucking break. the next page of this also has this same character say she deserves her "nut". there's a few other old memes referenced in this, including a character saying she hopes the person who has murdered her sister, her brother-in-law, and their multiple young children "dies in a fire" and then later feels guilty about it because it's the "meanest thing she's ever said." these people aren't real!! they are cartoon characters!!
i just can't stress how this outdated, contemporary, try-hard humor tone does not nicely merge with the high-science, religious eldritch horror background it's up against. it's grating.
8.there is only one character in this entire novel that's black, whose dialogue is sometimes written in a jamaican accent, sometimes not, like the author couldn't decide. she is also brutally murdered bc of course! her ghost haunts her murderer and they have a weird meta discussion about it, before the ghost of the murdered black woman seemingly offends the character and we are given another half-page long rant:
<blockquote>"Easy, huh? Easy to get me distracted and sympathetic? To come to me crying your white woman tears?" She spits for emphasis. "Just so you can betray and murder the one Black friend you had in your entire life."
That hits a weak spot in my armor, and I don't have a comeback. "Yeah. Sorry."
"People are counting on me! And now I can't help anyone ever again. Your... your moral relativism is disgusting. And so is your work."
"Seriously? My working in a brothel is not the problem here. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of consensual sex." (this continues on for six more sentences and the racism is dropped)</blockquote>
this is especially funny bc this author advertised this as an "antiracist cosmic horror", bc it uses eldritch elements and well... we all know about lovecraft! except, can you really argue you are doing anything better than lovecraft did when your black character exists only to be murdered? lmao
9. while the dialogue in this book is cringy, the exposition is not much better. the actionable parts especially are insanely bad:
<blockquote>"But I woke up in a hurry when I heard several people toward the front of the store scream, followed by the sound of something large smashing through a front window, followed by even more screaming."</blockquote>
ah.... thank you..... that was so riveting............ so fun to read!!
10. throughout the first two parts of the novel, both characters make random asides i mentioned earlier that are just kind of general feminist.... well... rants? erin goes on for a page about wage gaps, savannah endlessly goes on about being judged for being a sex worker, etc. it happens so much i wondered if the horror of this was going to culminate in some kind of feminist metaphor, only for the final part of this to beboth erin and savannah holding a woman prisoner and forcing her to give birth against her will. okay. sure. yay! feminism!
0.5
the consequences of letting terminally online gen xers publish books. also proof that a lot of people who pride themselves on being (white) feminists don't actually know anyone irl who belong to other disenfranchised demographics they then write about to give themselves a pat on the back.
this book made me so mad that i finished it in one day out of spite and dog eared every page that made me mad, i've tried my best to shorten it to the list below:
1. the three separate POVs have barely any distinction between voices, and there is a persistent problem of us having to watch these characters learn information we already learned in a previous section - which is especially tiring because the only way actual real expository info if given to you in this novel is through characters watching a youtube video from a doctor. huge, dialogue walls of info dumps from a youtube video. where is your imagination lucy..........
2. the writing in this is extremely plain and uninspired (although some of the body horror/gore was fun) which made it even worse when snyder would attempt at something resembling prose:
<blockquote>"You ready?" Betty's question creaks like the hinge of a forgotten gate.
"Absolutely." My own voice is the dry fluttering of moth wings.</blockquote>
3. Despite this being marketed as a lesbian erotic horror the author simply cannot resist boldly proclaiming how biphobic all lesbians are!! which makes me wonder how many lesbians in the Real Life Actual World this author knows. i doubled down on this question when on the same page about lesbians being biphobic, the author describes how the sex worker character got her mostly lesbian clientele by advertising at "lesbian bars and such" - like the author can't even think of any actual spaces lesbians hang out at.
4.
--> 4a. there is also this weird scene early on when erin (first pov chara) sees savannah (second pov character) for the first time and describes her as having "so much makeup on she looks like a drag queen" which i also found really strange and like.... a little suspect? there are almost no other physical descriptions of the characters given - we know erin has blue eyes, savannah has blond hair - but that's about it. if this was meant to be indicative of erin's personality, someone who is maybe kind of queerphobic and judgy it didn't come across that way bc she's not like that anywhere else.... and we are also given no indication that savannah is that glammed up or flamboyant elsewhere. it was just a strange thing to say in addition to the incidental transphobia above?
5. honestly most of my problems in this boil down to the sex worker POV character, savannah. her section is the shortest, and most of it is padded up with diatribes about feminism or being pro-sex work in a way that adds nothing to the novel and also makes me confused about exactly what kind of book lucy snyder thinks she's writing because of points i'll address later on. while i wouldn't say any POV character in this is "developed", savannah is by far the least realized one, and her true only character trait is being so turned on by violence that it makes her orgasm. sure. hypersexual sex worker is definitely a very fun thing to explore and not at all dull and uninventive.
even in non-sexual instances, the writing for her says stuff like: "curiosity itches at me like a yeast infection." jesus christ. we get it. you are soooo edgy. your sex worker POV can only talk about cum, sex, and anything involving genitalia. you're insanely reductive!!!
6. also, for how much sex there is in this book.... none of it is written in any meaningful way. i appreciate the cannibalistic lesbian sex of the first part, but it's not written well. the first sex scene mentions king princess playing twice and is so awkward that the real horror of this novel was my second hand embarrassment.
7. this author writes like your worst cringe millennial or gen x friend who is like 7-8 meme cycles behind you. a literal line in this, when a character is worried about the size of a man's penis she's about to have sex with:
<blockquote>"But when he undid the fly of his cassock and levered his dick out, I had me a <i>concern</i>."</blockquote>
like. give me a fucking break. the next page of this also has this same character say she deserves her "nut". there's a few other old memes referenced in this, including a character saying she hopes the person who has murdered her sister, her brother-in-law, and their multiple young children "dies in a fire" and then later feels guilty about it because it's the "meanest thing she's ever said." these people aren't real!! they are cartoon characters!!
i just can't stress how this outdated, contemporary, try-hard humor tone does not nicely merge with the high-science, religious eldritch horror background it's up against. it's grating.
8.
<blockquote>"Easy, huh? Easy to get me distracted and sympathetic? To come to me crying your white woman tears?" She spits for emphasis. "Just so you can betray and murder the one Black friend you had in your entire life."
That hits a weak spot in my armor, and I don't have a comeback. "Yeah. Sorry."
"People are counting on me! And now I can't help anyone ever again. Your... your moral relativism is disgusting. And so is your work."
"Seriously? My working in a brothel is not the problem here. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of consensual sex." (this continues on for six more sentences and the racism is dropped)</blockquote>
this is especially funny bc this author advertised this as an "antiracist cosmic horror", bc it uses eldritch elements and well... we all know about lovecraft! except, can you really argue you are doing anything better than lovecraft did when your black character exists only to be murdered? lmao
9. while the dialogue in this book is cringy, the exposition is not much better. the actionable parts especially are insanely bad:
<blockquote>"But I woke up in a hurry when I heard several people toward the front of the store scream, followed by the sound of something large smashing through a front window, followed by even more screaming."</blockquote>
ah.... thank you..... that was so riveting............ so fun to read!!
10. throughout the first two parts of the novel, both characters make random asides i mentioned earlier that are just kind of general feminist.... well... rants? erin goes on for a page about wage gaps, savannah endlessly goes on about being judged for being a sex worker, etc. it happens so much i wondered if the horror of this was going to culminate in some kind of feminist metaphor, only for the final part of this to be
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
i recognize hendrix is Not for everyone but i think everyone is allowed one not-amazing-but-still-fun horror author they like for no explainable reason and he’s mine idgaf
super fun concept and i love slashers so i really loved this tho it did make me lol that he ended up just predicting how the scream reboot movies would go. also making your laurie strode stand in be a butch lesbian cowboy is SOOOOOO real. i also now want to run a TTRPG where everyone’s PCs are based off of final girls now.
using final girls as a lens to analyze our cultures obsession w true crime was interesting but felt like that was really tossed to the side by the final act. also hendrix does this thing in all of his books ive read where he has cops be complete assholes who are either deeply unhelpful or just straight up evil but he still has this weird tone of cop apologia that always makes me lol - the line about a character “loving cops so much that she was sad when 9/11 happened” made me screaaaam.
but truly this was fun and i shamefully have never seen the slasher franchise the main character is based on so now i gotta i guess……. also i feel like hendrix tries deeply to do the whole “women! sisterhood! women love each other and look out for each other!” thing and it definitely has Not landed in other books of his but i felt like this was the most authentic of the bunch so good on him for finally figuring it out 👍🏻
super fun concept and i love slashers so i really loved this tho it did make me lol that he ended up just predicting how the scream reboot movies would go. also making your laurie strode stand in be a butch lesbian cowboy is SOOOOOO real. i also now want to run a TTRPG where everyone’s PCs are based off of final girls now.
using final girls as a lens to analyze our cultures obsession w true crime was interesting but felt like that was really tossed to the side by the final act. also hendrix does this thing in all of his books ive read where he has cops be complete assholes who are either deeply unhelpful or just straight up evil but he still has this weird tone of cop apologia that always makes me lol - the line about a character “loving cops so much that she was sad when 9/11 happened” made me screaaaam.
but truly this was fun and i shamefully have never seen the slasher franchise the main character is based on so now i gotta i guess……. also i feel like hendrix tries deeply to do the whole “women! sisterhood! women love each other and look out for each other!” thing and it definitely has Not landed in other books of his but i felt like this was the most authentic of the bunch so good on him for finally figuring it out 👍🏻
A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture by June Thomas
2.75
rating this low does have a bit of an ironic twist to it as this author points out several times how lesbians tend to be harsher on their spaces than we would hetero ones. fair point june and sorry to do it to you... but!
this was interesting but organized extremely weird to me. there would be brief mentions of things i wish were expanded upon and then tangents that made no sense to me structurally (why did we spend the last 3-4 pages of the lesbian bookstore section talking about harvey milk??). i liked some of the historical aspects i learned about lesbian bars/restaurants and sex toy shops, but didn't find the rest of the sections that interesting - i think a baby gay might though. i appreciate her transparency in how racist and segregated a lot of lesbian spaces were - a lot of white gays really mythologize the lesbian spaces in nyc in the 70s so it was nice to see a white author put that perspective in. however. i feel like this book is also in some ways complicit of the same thing - we have interviews and info about white bar owners, and then one line thrown away about the black lesbian bar owner in ALABAMA?? there's a much more interesting story you're teasing us with and not giving to us! i felt similarly with the lesbian bookstore section, which felt very defeatist in only highlighting bookstores that have since shuttered. they specifically mention a room of one's own in madison, a bookstore i've been to a few times, who is still lesbian-owned and hosts queer events constantly. later in the book, madison is also brought up as the current home for the women's music festival - so why are we not discussing success stories here? what did a room of own's one do that allowed them to stay open as a queer (lesbian) bookstore this whole time? maybe i'm just mad this book isn't what it was in my head - idk!
i'm also rating this low because i'm deeply sensitive about the topic of transphobia in lesbian spaces and i do not think this book took the right attitude towards that. when discussing racist or segregated lesbian bars or softball teams, it's done with an attitude that is clearly not giving leeway on these women's racist actions. it is presented matter-of-fact. in fact, june doesn't interview with or give any pull quotes from the racist organizers, giving attention instead to those who challenged party promoters in court or created their own teams for women of color. that's why it's so upsetting to me that the lesbian land section in particular gave so much credence to TERFs. maybe it's june thomas' own guilt at having been a frequent attender of past events such as the women's music festival, who knows. TERFs are given a voice in this, june thomas coddles them by giving reasoning behind why they think the way they do and saying she "understands" it to some degree. she expresses that she disagrees with them but believes they deserve "credit" for the work they've done - which is a little nuts, because most of the lesbian land section highlighted the separatist movement as massive failures that were miserable to be a part of. the lesbian land section ends with a plea to TERFs to re-consider and understand that they are echoing rhetoric that conservatives once used against them. and like... what the fuck? are we pleading with racists to stop being racist? why are we holding their hand about this so much?
i think the transphobic section of the lesbian community is very minor, and i've only really encountered it online - i think it's a generational thing, but i hate that for some reason the greater community as a large is stereotyped as being TERF-y but this kind of "gentle parenting" of transphobes is exactly what gets us to that point.
this was interesting but organized extremely weird to me. there would be brief mentions of things i wish were expanded upon and then tangents that made no sense to me structurally (why did we spend the last 3-4 pages of the lesbian bookstore section talking about harvey milk??). i liked some of the historical aspects i learned about lesbian bars/restaurants and sex toy shops, but didn't find the rest of the sections that interesting - i think a baby gay might though. i appreciate her transparency in how racist and segregated a lot of lesbian spaces were - a lot of white gays really mythologize the lesbian spaces in nyc in the 70s so it was nice to see a white author put that perspective in. however. i feel like this book is also in some ways complicit of the same thing - we have interviews and info about white bar owners, and then one line thrown away about the black lesbian bar owner in ALABAMA?? there's a much more interesting story you're teasing us with and not giving to us! i felt similarly with the lesbian bookstore section, which felt very defeatist in only highlighting bookstores that have since shuttered. they specifically mention a room of one's own in madison, a bookstore i've been to a few times, who is still lesbian-owned and hosts queer events constantly. later in the book, madison is also brought up as the current home for the women's music festival - so why are we not discussing success stories here? what did a room of own's one do that allowed them to stay open as a queer (lesbian) bookstore this whole time? maybe i'm just mad this book isn't what it was in my head - idk!
i'm also rating this low because i'm deeply sensitive about the topic of transphobia in lesbian spaces and i do not think this book took the right attitude towards that. when discussing racist or segregated lesbian bars or softball teams, it's done with an attitude that is clearly not giving leeway on these women's racist actions. it is presented matter-of-fact. in fact, june doesn't interview with or give any pull quotes from the racist organizers, giving attention instead to those who challenged party promoters in court or created their own teams for women of color. that's why it's so upsetting to me that the lesbian land section in particular gave so much credence to TERFs. maybe it's june thomas' own guilt at having been a frequent attender of past events such as the women's music festival, who knows. TERFs are given a voice in this, june thomas coddles them by giving reasoning behind why they think the way they do and saying she "understands" it to some degree. she expresses that she disagrees with them but believes they deserve "credit" for the work they've done - which is a little nuts, because most of the lesbian land section highlighted the separatist movement as massive failures that were miserable to be a part of. the lesbian land section ends with a plea to TERFs to re-consider and understand that they are echoing rhetoric that conservatives once used against them. and like... what the fuck? are we pleading with racists to stop being racist? why are we holding their hand about this so much?
i think the transphobic section of the lesbian community is very minor, and i've only really encountered it online - i think it's a generational thing, but i hate that for some reason the greater community as a large is stereotyped as being TERF-y but this kind of "gentle parenting" of transphobes is exactly what gets us to that point.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
5.0
"i do not think that i will ever see you again, but i will try to do what would please you if you knew."
every sentence in this is a gift.
every sentence in this is a gift.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
4.25
really harrowing and beautiful and made me feel like there was a stone in my stomach - this reminded me a lot of how i felt when i read our wives under the sea both in terms of emotions evoked and the reading experience of speculative fiction that cannot be classified wholly as one subgenre over another, but instead exists as a vehicle for the author to explore relationships and humanity. i think there's a good reason this is resurging in popularity right now - the concept of being oppressed and dehumanized for unknown reasons by unfamiliar people whose logic you cannot comprehend due to the absurdity of it all. the feeling of attempting to live a good, happy life despite extreme isolation - obviously formed by harpman's family fleeing persecution as jews in belgium, but also relatable in a late-stage capitalism breaking down community way.
maybe expected due to the publication year, the author's age and experience, etc but this felt a little rudimentary in its exploration of feminism and at times leaned very heavily into concepts of bio essentialism that i just didn't care for. it's hard to tell if this was the intention of the author or that our protagonist was raised by women raised and brainwashed so severely by patriarchy that even those ideals filtered through in a world isolated of that. the completely inaccurate hymen scene, the idea that the women and our protagonist were somehow unfulfilled for not having children, the idea that beauty existed just to appeal to men...... i don't know. it bummed me out and brought me out of the reverie this book was otherwise capable of putting me in. i think our protagonist, who has never known society or patriarchy or gender roles besides secondhand accounts would have been a great thought experiment if it didn't continue to keep coming back to like inherent wants/desires/etc being framed as because she was a woman.
maybe expected due to the publication year, the author's age and experience, etc but this felt a little rudimentary in its exploration of feminism and at times leaned very heavily into concepts of bio essentialism that i just didn't care for. it's hard to tell if this was the intention of the author or that our protagonist was raised by women raised and brainwashed so severely by patriarchy that even those ideals filtered through in a world isolated of that. the completely inaccurate hymen scene, the idea that the women and our protagonist were somehow unfulfilled for not having children, the idea that beauty existed just to appeal to men...... i don't know. it bummed me out and brought me out of the reverie this book was otherwise capable of putting me in. i think our protagonist, who has never known society or patriarchy or gender roles besides secondhand accounts would have been a great thought experiment if it didn't continue to keep coming back to like inherent wants/desires/etc being framed as because she was a woman.
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
adventurous
dark
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
i am always getting personally recommended t. kingfisher by friends and i Understand why now, but i wish i had picked up one of her gothic works first. maybe my standards were too high for a novella but i just dislike things like goodness vs evil being explained away as inherent things we are born into - i think it's boring, and it's especially boring in fairytale retellings and dissections. for a subversive fairytale i wish this had..... well. subverted more. imo, as someone who reads a lot of fairytale retellings, i think sleeping beauty is just a difficult one to alter and still make it interesting (i also did not like heather walter's malice, but i really love angela carter's lady of the house of love, so) and i think the concept of a sympathetic ""maleficent"" is just kind of derivative at this point.
if you're someone into really cozy fantasy you'd probably enjoy this but that simply isn't me...... 😔😔😔
if you're someone into really cozy fantasy you'd probably enjoy this but that simply isn't me...... 😔😔😔
I'll Get Back to You by Becca Grischow
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
3.25
A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
TL;DR this is a 4/5 romance and a 2/5 political fantasy.
Picked this up because I really enjoyed Allison Saft's A Far Wilder Magic - the world building and magic system in that wasn't amazing, but the plot was relatively simple and contained, and I liked the characters and their relationship a lot. The two leads in that were really isolated so there wasn't a lot of noise, just a really nice fantasy romance. These same problems carried over into A Dark and Drowning Tide - except here this world was too big and the plot too ambitious for where Saft's technical skill is at when it comes to world building. I still don't even know *what* the magic system was. There were vague mentions of aether but ultimately everyone was just a waterbender for some reason???? anyway.
I didn't quite get the beginning of this book or really the reasoning for why the plot kicked off tbh - you're introduced to a large cast of characters very quickly who you are told all have long-term relationships to each other... EXCEPT our POV character. This leads to a lot of dynamics being told to you rather than shown. The main group are representatives of essentially each of the colonized nations that are now ""united"" under one central kingdom. These characters all kind of take on caricatures rather than feeling fully fleshed out, which would be fine if so much of this book didn't hinge on you caring about them!! There's a few deaths that are meant to be shocking/impactful and it's like.... you just killed off a background character actor called Jock Bully! idgaf! Even in terms of the romance, our protagonist Lorelai is really unobservant of Sylvia's crush on her, which makes their switch from enemies to lovers feel a little too quick. I've seen a few people mention that this book would be more enjoyable without a lot of tweaks from Sylvia's perspective and I'm inclined to agree - we'd be closer to the magic/folklore creatures this book keeps telling us is important, we'd have more insight into the various dynamics at play, and I think even Lorelai would come across as more compelling - the grumpy accidentally rude love interest in the flavor of Mr Darcy!!
I really enjoyed Lorelai and Sylvia in concept - like. I'm always going to eat up whimsical esoteric fairytale swan princess femme x dark and defensive and grounded to earth butch**. I'm a simple woman. And I think Allison Saft is soooo talented at writing really great romance scenes - I thought for a while I didn't care for this book and then the romance kicked in and I was like ohhhh I'm Locking Tf IN. Every scene was so sweet and tender and felt so fully actualized in the midst of a book that otherwise felt incredibly hollow. And if I were rating this solely on enjoyment of the romance this would easily be 4/5 stars - but GOD I just did not care for anything else about this.
**but also now that I'm thinking about it.... in a world where there is a lot of religious and cultural persecution this book does a stunning lack of consideration re: gender. like all the other women in this book are traditionally feminine except lorelai and it's not that i want to experience homophobia or butchphobia in the text, but it is interesting.... i almost wonder if lorelai was at one point a man and that switched during drafting because honestly outside of pronoun usage there really is nothing indicative of her gender expression despite it seeming like something that should be significant. **
The politics in this are.... well. troubling. I try not to be the friend that's too woke about fantasy plots and kind of just roll with the punches but when authors are so insistent upon using things from our world - both in name and symbology - it's hard not to scrutinize. You can't have literal, actual, real Nazis in this book where the main villain is motivated by a fear of the threat of colonization/mass extermination AND make me try to see colonization as a favorable option for peace AND see squashing of a civil war as resistance to cultural assimilation as a GOOD THING?????? Are you fucking crazy.
I enjoyed the Jewish mythos in this a lot and I think the message of this being about how antisemitic a lot of fairytales are and trying to subvert that through Lorelai's character was interesting but ultimately went nowhere? Just a lot of people being antisemitic to her that we were supposed to enjoy and feel sad over them?
Overall, I feel like this book was really derivative. It's skeleton at large (representatives from each community in a kingdom come together to try to hunt down something that will give their community power/an upper hand.... then suddenly there's a murder amongst them and our protagonist must play whodunnit and team up with someone who she acts like she hates but it's a defense mechanism because they really love them..................) is normally something I enjoy. In fact, it's basic plot structure is almost identical to Gideon the Ninth. Lol. But this lacked any loveable characters or catharsis for a sympathetic villain. Things just kind of felt like they were happening to or at the characters, not like I was witnessing the characters enacting the motions - if that makes any sense at all.
TL;DR this is a 4/5 romance and a 2/5 political fantasy.
Picked this up because I really enjoyed Allison Saft's A Far Wilder Magic - the world building and magic system in that wasn't amazing, but the plot was relatively simple and contained, and I liked the characters and their relationship a lot. The two leads in that were really isolated so there wasn't a lot of noise, just a really nice fantasy romance. These same problems carried over into A Dark and Drowning Tide - except here this world was too big and the plot too ambitious for where Saft's technical skill is at when it comes to world building. I still don't even know *what* the magic system was. There were vague mentions of aether but ultimately everyone was just a waterbender for some reason???? anyway.
I didn't quite get the beginning of this book or really the reasoning for why the plot kicked off tbh - you're introduced to a large cast of characters very quickly who you are told all have long-term relationships to each other... EXCEPT our POV character. This leads to a lot of dynamics being told to you rather than shown. The main group are representatives of essentially each of the colonized nations that are now ""united"" under one central kingdom. These characters all kind of take on caricatures rather than feeling fully fleshed out, which would be fine if so much of this book didn't hinge on you caring about them!! There's a few deaths that are meant to be shocking/impactful and it's like.... you just killed off a background character actor called Jock Bully! idgaf! Even in terms of the romance, our protagonist Lorelai is really unobservant of Sylvia's crush on her, which makes their switch from enemies to lovers feel a little too quick. I've seen a few people mention that this book would be more enjoyable without a lot of tweaks from Sylvia's perspective and I'm inclined to agree - we'd be closer to the magic/folklore creatures this book keeps telling us is important, we'd have more insight into the various dynamics at play, and I think even Lorelai would come across as more compelling - the grumpy accidentally rude love interest in the flavor of Mr Darcy!!
I really enjoyed Lorelai and Sylvia in concept - like. I'm always going to eat up whimsical esoteric fairytale swan princess femme x dark and defensive and grounded to earth butch**. I'm a simple woman. And I think Allison Saft is soooo talented at writing really great romance scenes - I thought for a while I didn't care for this book and then the romance kicked in and I was like ohhhh I'm Locking Tf IN. Every scene was so sweet and tender and felt so fully actualized in the midst of a book that otherwise felt incredibly hollow. And if I were rating this solely on enjoyment of the romance this would easily be 4/5 stars - but GOD I just did not care for anything else about this.
**but also now that I'm thinking about it.... in a world where there is a lot of religious and cultural persecution this book does a stunning lack of consideration re: gender. like all the other women in this book are traditionally feminine except lorelai and it's not that i want to experience homophobia or butchphobia in the text, but it is interesting.... i almost wonder if lorelai was at one point a man and that switched during drafting because honestly outside of pronoun usage there really is nothing indicative of her gender expression despite it seeming like something that should be significant. **
The politics in this are.... well. troubling. I try not to be the friend that's too woke about fantasy plots and kind of just roll with the punches but when authors are so insistent upon using things from our world - both in name and symbology - it's hard not to scrutinize. You can't have literal, actual, real Nazis in this book where the main villain is motivated by a fear of the threat of colonization/mass extermination AND make me try to see colonization as a favorable option for peace AND see squashing of a civil war as resistance to cultural assimilation as a GOOD THING?????? Are you fucking crazy.
I enjoyed the Jewish mythos in this a lot and I think the message of this being about how antisemitic a lot of fairytales are and trying to subvert that through Lorelai's character was interesting but ultimately went nowhere? Just a lot of people being antisemitic to her that we were supposed to enjoy and feel sad over them?
Overall, I feel like this book was really derivative. It's skeleton at large (representatives from each community in a kingdom come together to try to hunt down something that will give their community power/an upper hand.... then suddenly there's a murder amongst them and our protagonist must play whodunnit and team up with someone who she acts like she hates but it's a defense mechanism because they really love them..................) is normally something I enjoy. In fact, it's basic plot structure is almost identical to Gideon the Ninth. Lol. But this lacked any loveable characters or catharsis for a sympathetic villain. Things just kind of felt like they were happening to or at the characters, not like I was witnessing the characters enacting the motions - if that makes any sense at all.