#ownvoices review

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

For Today I Am A Boy by Kim Fu

goodreads

Peter Huang and his sisters—elegant Adele, shrewd Helen, and Bonnie the bon vivant—grow up in a house of many secrets, then escape the confines of small-town Ontario and spread from Montreal to California to Berlin. Peter’s own journey is obstructed by playground bullies, masochistic lovers, Christian ex-gays, and the ever-present shadow of his Chinese father. At birth, Peter had been given the Chinese name Juan Chaun, powerful king. The exalted only son in the middle of three daughters, Peter was the one who would finally embody his immigrant father's ideal of power and masculinity. But Peter has different dreams: he is certain he is a girl.

Mod opinion: I haven't heard of this book before and it doesn't really sound interesting to me.

[kiraleighart]

A new ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ review for my books? Yay!

I'm so happy you enjoyed CONSTELIS VOSS vol. 2, Purav! I hope you love the other volumes as well :)

It's so kind of you to support my work. That means the world to me ❤️

[intersexbookclub]

Summary: Power to Yield (Feb 2024)

We assembled on 2024-03-01 to talk about our February book pick: Power To Yield and Other Stories by intersex author Bogi Takács. The book is a collection of science fiction & fantasy short stories.

This was a first for our book club in that we spent the whole session gushing about the book. Everybody loved it. We haven’t been giving books ratings thus far but this one would get a 5/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟.

Overall takes:

vic: I loved it, I loved it so much. The stories all felt so different. Disability and intersex were very normalized and not shoehorned, it just felt so good. 

Michelle: the worlds in this book felt so richly crafted. This book reminded me that short stories can be the bomb! I got gender euphoria from seeing characters use neopronouns!!! So refreshing and exciting to see them in text. That was how I got started with them, I wrote characters like that and then I was like.... moi? It’s just so joyfully affirming. 

Bnuuy: I only read “Folded into tendril and leaf” and started "The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade" but it deeply impressed me. 

Elizabeth: I'm not really a short story person. I find I take a while to get immersed in a book, and I don't like the switching from story to story so much. And as someone who does not like the short story genre, I liked this collection, which I feel says a lot. 

Intersex themes:

Intersex representation throughout the book that feels both casual and important at the same time. It’s normalized in a way that feels tremendously validating. Takács also importantly depicts a variety of intersex characters in terms of gender (binary vs genderqueer), type of variation, and age. Folded into tendril and leaf depicts a romance with an intersex character that does not sexualize or fetishize being intersex. ❤️

Intersex sea creatures, always a classic 🦑 - clear example in the Good Friday story.

Plants as intersex. 🍃 A bunch of stories throughout the book involved somebody turning into a plant. We talked about how this turned out to be a fruitful (lol) metaphor since so many plants are cosexual or dichogamous, there’s so much variety and difference in plant reproduction and it disrupts our ideas of what sex is. Bnuuy pointed out that botany can also just be an affirming thing for intersex people to learn about, e.g. a flower with both male and female reproductive parts is called a “perfect flower”! It’s valued rather than described as a deficiency.

In the fantasy story Power To Yield, the doctor feels the pain of his patients as he treats them, which per Elizabeth: “feels like such an intersex and/or disability fantasy”. Pain may not always be avoided but having doctors feel and be aware of our pain would change the patient-doctor dynamic so much.

Neopronouns: there are a lot of neopronouns used in a variety of settings for a variety of characters, disrupting ideas of gender and sex in ways that felt joyfully inclusive and affirming. As Michelle put it: “we get a glimpse of the world outside the binary in a kind of ecstatic way. Like, hey, you don't have to be male or female. You can be intersex and something else. And you can be trans. Like, it's just so, like, joyfully affirming. Genuinely like a rainbow-colored feeling.” 🌈 (also, reading neopronouns in context is a great way to learn how to use them!)

Other themes:

System change happens through people relating to each other differently. As vic put it: “Bogi really showed that the people are the system and the system is made of people”. Such as in the Spy-Turns-Into-A-Plant story the ways that Hasidic people were combining old and new cultural practices to include intersex & genderqueer people, in the Solidarity Fair story everybody noticed the trader was missing, and in Power To Yield there’s a need for all of the possible neurotypes. 

Mentorship: the book defies the conventions of the mentorship trope. A lot of times in media, mentors are marked for death once their apprentice has learnt what they need, but here the mentors stick around and continue to be in their apprentices’ lives in different ways.

Survival stories that were communal in mindset rather than rugged individuals. We see characters putting the pieces back together after catastrophic events such as wars and invasions. There’s an optimism that we can survive catastrophe. We liked the depictions of joy and competence. Michelle identified a Talmudic theme of "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”, throughout the book.

Other things we liked:

The prose. Michelle praised it as approachable. Xe also commented: “Bogi has an authorial voice that feels well read. People who don't read so much have a particular style and it can be hard to read, they have a hard time expressing themselves... and this was the opposite of that!”

Disability representation that felt realistic. For example, a character being constantly exhausted due to being drained of blood, and a character worried about breaking an ankle while walking through uneven terrain. Disability wasn’t skimmed over nor was it romanticized, just treated with good humour as a quotidian kind of limitation.

Representation of old people. There’s a big range of characters’ life stages. Old characters are active and given things to do, and got to have personalities beyond “old”. For example, the old sociologist in the solidarity fair story was open-minded and competent. She didn’t want to sit around and be a granny. 

Not being US-centric: in speculative fiction there’s a way of talking about or relating to things that can feel very American (vic: “even though they’re in space, they act as though they’re in California”) and Takács doesn’t do this, which we appreciated. As Michelle put it: “There’s a definite immigrant vibe to the book.”

Representation of Jewish characters. Not everybody could relate to the Orthodox Jews but not every story needs to be relatable.

All these forms of representation come together. As vic put it: “the disability politics, intersex, the trans stuff… It all felt so normal and was incorporated in a way that felt so seamless. It felt really good reading it,  didn't feel like any of it was shoehorned in.. Just like, yep, normal people living their normal lives and we're not making anyone feel weird about their differences. Usually with books that have people that are different from the mainstream in some way it's kind of clunky: even if it's #OwnVoices, it still reads as self-conscious and apologetic. But this book all read very un-self-conscious and very comfortable.”

What we didn’t like:

Elizabeth doesn’t like the order in which the stories were presented. Ze felt the first few stories were fine but didn’t showcase what the book has to offer. Ze recommended to the group to start with:

"Folded into tendril and leaf" (medium length)

"The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade" (medium length)

"The ladybug, in flight" (very short)

"Power to yield" (novelette)

Bnuuy and vic started reading with Elizabeth’s recommended stories, and this may have influenced the conversation.

After the book discussion, vic went back and re-read the stories in order, and mentioned they also didn’t vibe with the order of the stories as presented in the book.

Stories of note:

“Folded into Tendril And Leaf”: we liked the water caltrop description and visualization. It was Elizabeth’s favourite: “The reason I put that on my list of recommendations is it was just such a big, warm hug of fiction. It's such a tender story, but at the same time it grapples with really serious stuff. I've brought it up before that I'm a sucker for any sort of intersex at puberty story because that's the kind of intersex I am. But also the intersex people as plants theme really landed here.” Elizabeth also praised how there was a character who realized their privilege that they didn't have to follow the news.

“The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade”: we liked the realism of the organizing, and we all wanted stories from this setting, especially about the aliens that were genocide survivors. It was Bnuuy’s favourite, enjoying its comedy and how it flips stereotypes of Gen Z/Alpha by having them be the older generation in this future. The depiction of an alien who presents as though she is a cat was amusing; vic described it as: “Yeah, the image of a gigantic, floating metallic orb  meowing so that it can be more relatable to humans is, I think, a huge non-binary mood.”

“Power to Yield”: we appreciated the depiction of autistic special interest (and it has its own word: abuwen!) that is realistic without either romanticizing or spectacularizing it. It shows how a special interest can happen suddenly, it can be overpowering, it can sometimes be inappropriate, it can be unpleasant for the person as they neglect other parts of their life. We could all relate. The depiction of asexual BDSM also stood out; per vic: “oh, I guess it can not be a sex thing!”

“The Ladybug, in Flight”: Michelle was horrified (in a good way) by the slow consensual cannibalism. Whereas vic read that one as practical and utilitarian in an autistic way, like sometimes autistic people will horrify others for practical things.

“Volatile Patterns”: Michelle is very crafty and this was xer favourite: “the story talks about  reappropriating motifs and being like, no, you're doing it wrong. We can show you how to do it right. It's fine. Just stop doing it the wrong way. Like, especially clothing attacking people was very funny to me because it reminded me of a game called Fall in London, where in certain areas of the world, everything is sentient.”

“A Technical Term, Like Privilege”: This one vic highlighted as a favourite: “I often feel sad about the place where I live, because it is a rental and it's not getting cared for the way it deserves to be. So the metaphor of the house needing your blood was apt. I've read a few rental horror metaphors, and they were all bad. So I was really happy to read this one.” Also, the disability representation: “when the character in the house story came up with a good, reasonable solution and then was SHOT DOWN it was so real”.

Overall: out of all the books we’ve read thus far for the book club, this is the one everybody was most positive about. It was a joy to read and we recommend it! 💜

[elliepassmore]

Sheine Lende review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: urban fantasy, mystery, Indigenous storytelling, historical fantasy

Elatsoe review

Big thanks to Netgalley, Levine Querido, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really enjoyed Elatsoe so I was super excited to see there was going to be a prequel about her grandmother! This book ends with the suggestion that there's more stories from this world to come, so I'm hoping we get something from four/six-great-grandmother (more from Sheine Lende or Elatsoe would also be good, I'm not picky)

Much like with Ellie, Shane's story centers around a mystery, though this one is a missing person's case and not a murder. Shane's mother, Lorenza, utilizes her dogs and ghost dog to find people who are missing. More recently Shane has begun helping her and the two make a good ghost-calling, person-finding duo. I liked reading about how they tracked people down and how their work got spread around by word-of-mouth.

I was a little confused on when this story occurred, so I found the author's note saying it was the 1970s to be helpful. In this world at this point in time, fairy rings are still being implemented and they're a relatively new technology still. It was interesting to see how people talked about them and the various opinions and worries people had, especially considering they're so present in Ellie's time. The missing person's case is tied up closely with fairy rings, though in a somewhat unusual way, so there was some light dealings with the Fair Folk and, more interestingly, with an ex-academic who specialized in them.

When her mother disappears, Shane takes over both the investigation for the missing kid(s) and the investigation for her mother's disappearance. She actually finds the older girl pretty quickly, and by complete accident, and they have a chance to spend some time together and bond before they make it back to everyone else. I liked that Shane and Donnie became fast friends and were eager to help one another out. I also appreciated that Donnie's grandparents were more than willing to travel with the girls and Shane's younger brother, Marco, to various places in order to find Donnie's younger brother (the missing boy) and Shane's mom.

Despite having a few family members remaining, Shane has a good support system, from her friend Amelia, to their elderly neighbor, to her newfound friendship with Donnie and the help of Donnie's grandparents. Ellie has that too in her book, but she starts that way, Shane starts by feeling alone and I feel for this type of YA adventure, having a large support system of mixed teenagers and adults really breaks the mold. I also liked that the adults, particularly the newer ones, were willing to defer ton Shane's expertise and research and didn't just insist they were right.

Shane is confident in herself, though not to the point of ego, and is able to draw on her knowledge, what her mother taught her, and her own investigative skills to connect dots and come up with next steps. She's overall friendly but knows when to put her foot down and is more than capable of being firm and even intimidating when necessary. She's still coming into her ghost-raising power, so I also liked seeing her knowledge and experimentation in that area.

Beyond the mystery element, this book also deals with trauma, family, and the effects of colonialism. Shane, Marcos, and Lorenza definitely had a hard time for a while, are technically still having a hard time, and it's a direct result of historical and modern colonialist greed. The family also suffered some major losses when Shane was younger, resulting in there being only a few family members and the dispersal of their home community. Shane and Marcos both still have a lot of emotions about that, albeit different ones since Marcos was in utero when this was going on and only knows the aftermath. Shane also struggles with not knowing or misremembering traditional Lipan stories and has several moments when she deeply wishes there were community members around she could engage with. It was definitely heartbreaking to read about those aspects, but I did enjoy seeing Shane begin to set them to rights. I also think the loss of their original support system and the growth of a different one help mirror each other and the path of healing in the story.

Overall I liked this story and think it stands well both on its own and as an addition to the world of Elatsoe. Shane definitely has an interesting story, and I would say this book serves as both a mystery and a healing journey. I'm looking forward to whatever Little Badger writes next!

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

Review: Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones Rating: 5/5

When Haf (pronounced like hav) meets Christopher at a Christmas party, she's not expecting to leave with a fake boyfriend. And she's definitely not expecting to end up spending Christmas with him and his family, including his striking sister, Kit. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Haf must figure out how to help Christopher through the holidays while keeping her crush on Kit in her pants.

This is the chaotic wlw Christmas romance I've been looking for! Haf is the epitome of bi disaster and it was really cool to read about a character who has undiagnosed autism but the author is intentionally writing it that way! She's such a fun, kind protagonist and I loved watching her grow over the course of the novel. 

Kit is an excellent love interest, too. The sour to Haf's sweet. She's snarky and sure of herself and it was so cool to see those attributes in a disabled character, especially one who is perceived as desirable and sexy. I loved that she had a mobility aid for her Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and that her symptoms and limitations actually came up and were treated respectfully by the people around her. More authors need to follow suit, please.

Christopher and Ambrose are also wonderful supporting characters. Christopher's such a high-strung nerd but in a fun way and it was delightful to see him coming out of his shell and start to stand up for himself. And Ambrose is an excellent snarky best friend (and a nonbinary fashion icon to boot!) 

If you're looking for a holiday romance with a hefty dose of fun and a touch of spice, definitely add this one to the mix.

[clarislam]

Book Review: "Hell Followed With Us" by Andrew Joseph White

Dealing with an apocalypse is hard enough, but being infected with a bioweapon by a cult is even worse. Learn more about Benji's adventure in "Hell Followed With Us" by Andrew Joseph White! #bookreview #HellFollowedWithUs #AndrewJosephWhite, #apocalypse #amreading

“Hell Followed With Us” by Andrew Joseph White I’m back with another book review, and this time I’m reviewing “Hell Followed With Us” by Andrew Joseph White! This is the author’s debut book, and I was interested in reading it the moment I read the blurb, so I had to see how this one turned out. Here’s a quick summary so we know what it’s about: “Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from…

[coffeeinkblog]

#BookReview #SwiftRiver By #EssieChambers #NetGalley

NetGalley Description A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK | A Most Anticipated Book from Today, Real Simple, Time, Los Angeles Times, and BookPage “The book we all need to revive our souls” (Nicole Dennis-Benn): A sweeping family saga about the complicated bond between mothers and daughters, the disappearance of a father, and the long-hidden history of a declining New England mill…

[lilibetbombshell]

[swiftthistletea]

publishers will talk about representation and "#OwnVoices" and push books about gay theatre kid humor teifling pirates having queer gay sex written by a woman from Massachusetts with a gummy smile who calls herself a "Disaster Bisexual" on twitter and women will read the books and write rave reviews on goodreads about how it was so refreshing to see good queer representation and how much they squee'd and fangirled so hard when gay pirate 1 called gay pirate 2 "his silly stinky little guy" that they woke up their husband. and people will say that if you read these books youre a morally good person and the Trumpers Will Not Win and then other women will comment about how the books about gay pirate buttsex between two "feral unhinged germlin mode queers" are the only things keeping them from killing themselves and making their family watch. and then you will go to half price books and see the gay pirate book front and center on a display for 8 months and there will always be two women standing around it talking very loudly about BTS and House of the Dragon and then after the trend dies down 18 copies of the book will take up half a shelf in the sci-fi/fantasy section and they will never move and it will just be like that for years and its all because another #OwnVoices cozy historical romantasy came out but this time its about fantasyworld Tibetan Monks having gay sex on Not Mount Everest and the whole cycle repeats again but this time with publications and goodreads articles talking about "timely" conversations about race and queer identity. but this time it will be shortly lived because it will come out that Jenny Luizou the author of the monk gay sex book is actually another Massachusetts woman with a too gummy smile and is actually not a nonbinary bipoc Chinese person from Kazakhstan but everyone should have known this anyway because she calls herself a "disaster bisexual" on twitter sometimes. the pirate gay sex book is still taking up half a shelf during all this

[writersraustin]

One of the weirdest things I've seen on Goodreads reviews: accounts that solely leave reviews that tell you what representation the book has. That's it.

They leave a 1 star review that lists all the representation, but leave nothing about what they thought of the book.

Why? Because they don't even read the book.

So, even if they say the book has a lot of diversity, you don't even know if it's done appropriately. The review does not tell you if it's good representation or not, just that it's representation.

[daystar-daydreamer]

Book review: Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack

Category: Middle-grade

Genre: Fantasy/historical/action-adventure

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 🌟 5/5 stars... I’m bawling as I write this review ;-;

Recommended for: 8-12

Black Bird, Blue Road is a 2022 book about a girl trying to cure her twin brother of his leprosy. When her parents announce that he’s to be sent to a leper colony, the twins run away and team up with a half-demon boy who tells them of a city where no one dies.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

“Pesah, I am not going to let you die. I’ll fight the Angel of Death itself for you. You said it has a lot of eyes? Well, I’ll poke all its eyes out.”

That utterly golden quote pretty much sums up most of what you need to know about Ziva.

Speaking of Ziva and Pesah, I think they’ve nearly topped my list of favorite fictional siblings (The Elric brothers are and always will be in first place)! I loed how passionate and protective Ziva was. Pesah was so sweet and gentle and very mature for a twelve-year-old... At least, much more mature than I was at twelve. 

I wish we’d gotten to see more of Ziva “mauling a situation into equality and fairness for everyone involved”, though. 

I really like the little bits where Azriel narrates. I also found it fascinating how he could see into the future and knows about pneumonia and how it works. It gives off the impression that he’s omnipotent, or at least not bound by time and space, cementing that he’s not an earthly creature. He’s something else, and he doesn’t play by the same rules that we do. 

[kiraleighart]

Another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review for INDIGO VOSS 😱

"It's this "been there done that" voice that describes sex, the transition of gender, alternate realities, and everything. Imagine if the coolest person you ever knew told you the coolest story you ever heard."

TYSM Ash Higgins for your beautiful review of INDIGO VOSS 😭 💗

Score INDIGO VOSS in paperback/eBook:

[rivermoose-vlogs]

Blog Tour: Maybe An Artist - Review

Blog Tour: Maybe An Artist – Review

Review: *I was provided with a free arc of this book in exchange for an honest review as part of this book tour. Right from the beginning, I love the bright, pastel style of this book. The colors are cheerful, and the art style simple enough not to be overwhelming or require a background in reading graphic novels (some graphic novels, in my experience, are not friendly to those un-used to…

[olderthannetfic]

I love seeing all the gripes about booktubers and YA authors on here as someone who works in publishing. A lot of the problem from these two spheres has to do with the fact that publishing, especially YA, is suffering right now. There was a boom in YA around a decade ago wherein we saw many YA novels and series received live action adaptions as TV series and movies. This was when YA books were the most profitable for authors. This was a relatively new genre-demographic (technically a demographic, but because there are stylistic and thematic similarities that are consistent across all genres of YA fiction, I will call it a "genre-demographic," "G-D" for short), and publishers were willing to take risks on acquiring more titles because they were valuing quantity over quality. They wanted to fill up shelves with YA novels as quickly as possible. However, this was a problem because they created an entirely new G-D based on a trend. The thematic and stylistic simplicities that were previously overlooked in YA became more well-known. YA began to lose popularity among the masses, and the oversaturation of the market has resulted in increasing competition among YA authors and more YA authors trying to branch out into other realms that will sell better, like "adult" books and middle grade.

Initially, YA was mostly read and purchased by/for teenagers, the intended target demographic. Then, these teenagers grow up, but their tastes did not. Most YA readers are women 26 years old and up. Publishers know this. The readers know this. Yet, the YA readers on book twitter and booktubers continue to push for changes in these books to better suit their needs as they age (slightly older/college aged protagonists, more sex scenes [unless they're sex scenes they don't like], more mature themes [as long as their authors properly prostrates themselves to the readers, of course], etc). They think of YA books as their safe place they can use to mindlessly consume, consume, consume, and anything more complex than an episode of Buffy threatens this veneer of control. The result is YA author Twitter drama. 

Even though all the authors are adults (also: most of their customers are adults, and an increasing amount of teenagers have begun skipping over YA alltogether and reading books for adults), they will fall back into purity culture and use "think of the children" which necessitates we prioritize the metaphorical innocence of the child (read: the adult YA enjoyer) over art, which unfortunately results in the consumer-led sanitization of the G-D. The YA readers are doing this for typical anti-esque reasons: control, moral postering, etc. The YA authors are taking part for two primary reasons: 1) they want to appeal to their consumer-base and the author-as-internet-personality-for-marketing demands this, and 2) they are eliminating their competition. The authors are using purity culture to demonize their fellow authors and victimize themselves. This is what led to the redefining of OwnVoices. It went from being a simple hashtag to help authors get more eyes on their work to being a requirement of YA authors, lest they want to risk persecution from their peers and customers. Publishers are aware of this but do not do much to combat this because it’s free marketing for them, and they don’t want to alienate the only people who spend money in that G-D. Publishers use people like me to follow YA authors and YA consumers on socials to keep track of their comments, as well as how they review books—assuming they actually read the books at all, which we know many do not. This has led to more book hauls are speed reading challenges among reviewers and booktubers, but that’s another thing for another time.

This is the last thing I’ll say before I go. This briefly cut into the mainstream consciousness last year. Book twitter drama (think Isabel Fall, Amélie Wen Zhao-Kosoko Jackson, Sarah Underwood, etc) is outrageous and insipid, but it seldom gets on the radar of those outside these circles. Last year Barnes and noble announced publicly they wouldn’t stock hardbacks of new books, something that was already in practice, to be honest. Cue disgruntled YA authors screeches. This wasn’t an issue and was very understandable. Paperbacks sell more. Hardbacks are larger, more expensive for buyers, and more time-consuming to produce. publishers were notified of this change over a year in advance. None of the authors with upcoming books would be affected because their publishers already knew to print paperbacks, unless their publisher decided to ignore B&N’s warning. People in publishing knew this, but the public did not. YA authors fell back into self-victimization mode and guilt tripping to strategically sell more copies of their books. However, publishers and agents alike noticed this, and some authors were punished behind the scenes. Those same authors then went on Twitter after the fact to target more of their peers in hopes of selling more books. [There are other factors influencing their behaviors, of course, but this ask is long enough.]

That’s all it is, really: YA authors are people in a failing G-D within a failing industry where they constantly need to eliminate their competition and compete to see who’s more moral than the next in hopes of selling books because their publishers don’t market them and give poor advances. YA readers in book twitter/booktubers are functionally conservative anti-intellectuals. (YA authors are also anti-intellectuals if it means they believe they'll sell more books. See the plethora of pathetic Twitter threads around back to school season: "The classics are all boring and bad and spread x ideas. School libraries should purchase more YA. Students should read more YA in class instead, like my book.") If you’re following any of them, please consider stopping for your own sanity. If you see them make or signal boost call out posts, always be skeptical because every other professional with repute around them already is.

--

Back in my teen years in the 90s, the term 'young adult' existed, but the only books I remember seeing were a few Judy Blume titles about realistic teen problems or something. I went straight from kids' books to plain old genre fiction for adults. It's amusing to hear that current teens are going back to that.

A lot of YA boom fallout feels to me like every other time something was a brief blip but a brief blip just as a person came of age: they spend forever waiting for "the normal status quo" to reassert itself and wondering why it does not.

[bulletnotestudies]

THE STUDYBLR WITH KNIVES SERVER PRESENTS: *✧ 2023 Jumbo Reading Challenge ✧*

a brand new year is upon us, so what better way to celebrate than with a fresh reading challenge! this year we decided to fill the gap between our thematic challenges with our biggest challenge yet - this 25 prompt challenge will last from january to the end of december and has 5 bonus prompts to make things a bit easier. most of the prompts are also quite broad, so they encourage you to diversify your reading without being too restricting and sucking all the fun out of reading :)

RULES: -> please reblog this post if you’re participating -> for each of the prompts, read a book of your choice and cross the prompt out on the above template -> post your updates in the form of text posts, bookish photos, or anything else you come up with under the tag #studyblr w/knives reading challenge! -> the jumbo challenge will last the entire year, but as always, feel free to take however long to complete it

! be sure to hide any spoilers under the cut when posting updates/reviews, so people can avoid them if needed :)

[transcript & explanations of the prompts under the cut]

This year's 25 prompts are: 1. released in 2023 2. by an author of colour 3. punny title * 4. transgender main character 5. recommended by a friend 6. horror or thriller 7. magical realism or high fantasy 8. poetry or nonfiction * 9. space opera or urban fantasy 10. rivals to lovers (academic/sports/workplace/etc. rivals to lovers) 11. mythology inspired * 12. #ownvoices 13. clever cover * (a book with a cover that you don't truly understand till after you've read the book) 14. ugly cover (or as we like to call it, this book deserved better) 15. minimalistic cover 16. water in the title (the word water, sea, ocean, river, lake,... in the title) 17. nonbinary author 18. main character of colour 19. black and white cover 20. one word title 21. bright, colourful cover 22. name of a place in the title (can be a real or fictional place) 23. intimidating book (a book that's intimidating to you for whatever reason) 24. heart or clockface on the cover * 25. title starting with the same letter as your name/nickname (the/a/an or their equivalents in other languages obviously don't count :))

*prompts marked with an asterisk are bonus prompts, meaning you don't have to complete them on storygraph in order to finish the challenge.

as per usual, the challenge is also on storygraph (check the reblogs of the post for the link) and if you have any questions about the challenge at all, my asks are open

[usergreenpixel]

JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 33: MADEMOISELLE REVOLUTION (2022)

1. The Introduction

Well, hello there, my dearest Citizens! Welcome back to Jacobin Fiction Convention! I missed you but, unfortunately, real life ™️ was a bit complicated yet again.

Either way, I’m back at it again, roasting analyzing historical fiction. Today’s “masterpiece” was graciously sent to me by @suburbanbeatnik in PDF form as a future review subject. And boy is it one hell of a ride.

Now, on paper, I was intrigued by a story of a Haitian biracial bisexual female protagonist, as there are many possibilities for that kind of story to unfold in a Frev setting.

Besides, it was written by an author who is promoting the #OwnVoices stories, which is a good intention in my opinion. Let’s see if the execution matches though.

(Spoiler alert: IT DOES NOT!)

Unfortunately, it looks like the book is only available in English at the moment and has to be purchased, mainly through Amazon. But maybe both of those things are for the best, since, upon finishing the book, I will be happy if it stays as contained and inaccessible to the wide audience as humanly possible.

Why? Well, more on that later.

This review will be longer than the ones I usually post, so please keep that in mind and grab some popcorn.

Also, it’s a very explicit book with scenes of sexual assault and gore. Goya’s “Disasters of War” and even “Innocent Rouge” levels of gore. So yeah, please be warned.

Anyway, this review is dedicated to @suburbanbeatnik , @jefflion , @lanterne , @on-holidays-by-mistake and @amypihcs . Love you, guys!

Now, let’s tear this sucker apart!!!

2. The Summary

The book follows the story of Sylvie de Rosiers, an aristocratic young woman born to a slave but raised by her plantation owner father as a free member of local nobility. Although not enslaved, Sylvie never felt truly accepted by the elites of Sainte Domingue.

However, following the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and one of her half-brothers manage to escape to France, where another revolution is unfolding.

Intrigued by the ideas of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, Sylvie must fight to find acceptance in this new context and carve out a place for herself.

Sounds interesting so far, right? Let’s see if the story lives up to expectations or not.

3. The Story

I have to admit that the first few chapters, the ones taking place on Haiti, were actually pretty good, or at least not bad. The pacing was good, the storyline building up to the uprising made sense and the introductions of the characters and the world building were fine.

Too bad that this lasted only for about four beginning chapters. The French chapters making up the bulk of the book were awful.

The characters suffer from assassination like they’re mafia snitches, the pacing turns into a speed run, the historical context isn’t explained well at all and the story rapidly stops making sense:

First Sylvie arrives and quickly meets Robespierre and the Duplay family, then becomes an ardent revolutionary, then flip flops between loving Eleonore Duplay and pining for Robespierre, then just so happens to meet Danton and Marat, then becomes a spy, then murders Marat… No, I’m not joking.

All of this is in the book with very little justification that makes sense. The worst part? The book isn’t stated as alternative history, so the author is very dishonest and presents everything in the book as actual history that is accurate to reality when it’s definitely not.

Oh, and flashbacks. The fucking flashbacks breaking immersion like a cat breaking a vase don’t help at all.

There’s also a ton of Thermidorian propaganda as well, so yeah… Fail.

4. The Original Characters

Let’s tackle the OCs first because the historical peeps deserve a separate category here.

First and foremost, I don’t like Sylvie as a character. She starts out as a vain spoiled brat growing up surrounded by privilege and luxury and openly looking down on slaves, especially on women.

Then she witnesses the execution of a rebel and very suddenly goes: “Fuck, slavery is awful!”, renounces her old ways, disowns her father and does a 180. It’s not written well though and is more like a teenage tantrum than character development.

Sylvie keeps flip flopping like this throughout the entire story too. Yay…

Oh, and she’s a Mary Sue. Everyone adores her except the villains, she’s able to charm her way through anything and obviously plays an important role in almost all of Frev! Robespierre even calls her The Mother of the Revolution at several points, even though she did nothing to earn that title.

She also pines for Robespierre for no reason at all, except for “he’s cool and charming I guess”, but in order to get closer to him, Sylvie Sue ™️ starts an intimate relationship with Eleonore Duplay.

So yeah, our protagonist manipulates another person (which is abuse) and plays Eleonore like a fiddle, but she also flip flops between only using Eleonore and actually loving her. Is Sylvie ever called out for that? Technically yes, but it gets resolved too quickly so it doesn’t count.

Also, Sylvie is INCREDIBLY selfish. She’s fine with manipulating Eleonore, fine with Charlotte Corday being executed for killing Marat (in the book Sylvie did it) and taking the blame… Again, everything revolves around Sylvie and she never gets called out on that either and never gets better.

She lacks consistent personality aside from those traits, however. She claims to want safety yet always takes the risky option and refuses to emigrate when it would help her obtain actual safety, for instance.

Gaspard, one of her half-brothers, is a much better character in my opinion, but still underdeveloped. But at least his journey from privileged fop to a revolutionary is less clunky. Too bad he dies with the Montagnards in the end.

Sylvie also has another half-brother, Edmond, who is cartoonishly evil and tries to murder Sylvie at one point.

Sylvie also has a standard issue evil stepmother who is eager to marry her off and thus get rid of her but at least has enough decency to not be actively malicious.

Her dad is loving, but painfully ignorant.

Sylvie’s aunt Euphemie de Rohmer is a good character, always looking out for Gaspard and Sylvie. She does emigrate to London during the reign of terror though.

Okay, now let’s discuss the historical figures.

5. The Historical Characters

I know that I usually don’t discuss accuracy, but an exception must be made here.

Maximilien Robespierre seems to undergo a typical “character arc” of “actual revolutionary turned ruthless dictator”. He is also one again coded as asexual and thus shown as not giving two shits about his lover, Eleonore Duplay. He tries to marry Sylvie for political reasons only later in the book and it’s all but stated that he condones all the violence going on and is called a hypocrite multiple times. Oh, and he also kisses Sylvie without her consent… Err… DID SIVAK CONFUSE HIM FOR DANTON?!!! Okay, one sec…

(Shows up with a bloody face) Okay, let’s continue…

Eleonore Duplay is a promising artist who is fiercely loyal to Robespierre but cheats on him with Sylvie and later turns out to be a member of a women’s secret society that is trying to curb the terror. She’s on board with murdering Marat and is also friends with Olympe de Gouges and Charlotte Corday. Wtf?!

(Checks that the antidepressants didn’t cause a hallucination)

Elisabeth Duplay falls in love with Gaspard and her marriage to Le Bas is portrayed as arranged by Robespierre to “reward” Le Bas for being a loyal Jacobin, but at least she is relatively happy in said marriage. Uhm, okay…

Olympe de Gouges and Charlotte Corday are portrayed as basically saints and also part of the secret society.

Corday in particular is willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of France and Sylvie is fine with that because, apparently, Corday has nothing to live for anyway but Sylvie does.

It’s not like in reality Corday actually had a family and Girondist friends or anything so yeah, TOTALLY OKAY to throw her under the bus amirite?!

Danton, luckily, is portrayed fairly accurately as a crass womanizing brute so at least that’s correct.

Marat is a stereotypical bloodthirsty monster who is supposed to be very smart yet acts like an idiot in the presence of our dear Sylvie Sue.

Charlotte Robespierre makes exactly one cameo and acts like a total ass to both Duplay sisters and to Sylvie (who she just met). Don’t get me wrong, Charlotte was at odds with the Duplay family but not all of them and certainly she wasn’t a bitch to every single fucking stranger.

Augustin Robespierre is merry, a gentleman, loyal to his ideas but also a part of that secret society and also supports the idea of offing Marat. Nice…

Surprisingly, Henriette Robespierre makes a cameo alongside Charlotte and also acts like an ass but at least less so than Charlotte. Except she shouldn’t even be in the book because the cameo happens in 1792, yet Henriette died in 1780. So it’s either a ghost or the author doesn’t care. I’m kind of inclined to believe the latter.

Where are Camille Desmoulins and Saint-Just, you may act? ABSENT, believe it or not! No, I’m not kidding! They’re nowhere to be seen for some reason!!! I have no idea why. They’re not even fucking mentioned!!!

Anyway, let’s move on before I lose my sanity.

6. The Setting

Again, the first chapters are much better than the rest. In the majority of the book the descriptions are not that great and the world building is laughably inaccurate, to the point that, if I were told that it’s a joke fanfic, I’d have believed it instantly!!!

7. The Writing

Thankfully, there’s no “First Person Present Tense” bullshit, but the writing is still full of problems. The aforementioned flashbacks are just one problem, but there are others.

For example, extremely clunky use of French. I’m the beginning of every chapter we get a date and the months are in French. This would’ve been fine but gets ridiculous in cases like “early avril 1793”. What’s wrong with writing “early APRIL”?!

Oh, and in another instance, the houses of families are called “Chez + Family name”, like Chez Rohmer and Chez Marat. It gets weird when the text has phrases like “went at Chez Marat”. Chez already means “at” in this context, so it’s extremely redundant and a damn eyesore. Wouldn’t it be better to say “Went to Marat’s apartment”? Apparently, not for Zoe Sivak!

Also, the author describes all the brutal and gory scenes of executions and torture at an alarming length and with a concerning amount of details, to the point that I got very uncomfortable despite not being squeamish most of the time.

8. The Conclusion

Phew, it’s finally over. As you may have guessed, I don’t recommend wasting your time and money on this pile of trash.

A 13-year old here on tumblr can write a better novel than whatever the fuck this author published.

It’s poorly researched with inaccuracies that even a quick Wikipedia search could fix, the protagonist is an awful Mary Sue, the historical characters get constantly fucked over… so yeah, please skip this shit.

Anyway, on that note, let’s conclude today’s meeting. I think I might need time to recover from reading this book…

Stay tuned for updates!

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel.