#One For All by Lillie Lainoff

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: One For All by Lillie Lainoff

Review: One For All by Lillie Lainoff

Author: Lillie LainoffPublisher: Farrar, Straus, and GirouxReleased: March 8, 2022Received: NetGalleyWarnings: Ableism, sexual assault (implied) The Three Musketeers, but OwnVoices, LGBTQ+, gender-bent, and with a leading lady that deals in chronic illness? Where do I sign up?!? One For All, written by Lillie Lainoff, makes a lot of big promises – and it nails every single one of them. Tania de…

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Remember y'all, *magic* doesn't negate the existence of disabled people. Eugenics does that. And Lainoff's book, All for One, is incredible and worth a read. It's on my bookshelf!

[a-chorus-of-storytellers]

TRRC Redathon Day 1 - 4

Day One: Finished One for all all by Lillie Lainoff. I loved getting immersed in the world of Tania de Batz and her sister in arms. Especially because this isn’t a scene-by-scene replay of the original with female characters. Rather Lillie Lainoff took the essence of the story and weaved something new and original from it. Overall a pleasant read, expertly mixing adventure with a number of social issues.

Day two: Spent the day listening to Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher by Walter Moers (read by the late Dirk Bach) while doing chores, taking a long walk and getting lots of dog cuddles. I love Walter Moer's play on words, his use of anagrams and allusive writing. Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher is an all time favourite of mine and no one could narrate it more witty and funny than Dirk Bach.

Day three and four: Read Artemisia Gentileschi und Der Zorn der Frauen a biographical novel by Gabriela Jaskulla. Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, is considered among the most accomplished 17th-century artists and the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. While it took me a long time to get into the book because of the writing style, it was an exciting story about a very fascinating person, art, Italy and the living environment of women in the 17th century. I just wish they had included some pictures of her artwork in the book because it’s really stunning.

[thatchronicfeeling]

I just listened to a book that has 1) swashbuckling 2) women with swords 3) a few queer characters 4) a protagonist with POTS!!!!!!!!!!!

Lille Lainoff’s One For All is lots of fun and has brilliant disability representation! It’s so rare and wonderful to come across this. 

[desdasiwrites]

– Lillie Lainoff, One for All

[salmonandfox]

Update on reading One for All by Lillie Lainoff

I still can't tell you exactly what the MC's diagnosis is, I'll leave that to someone better versed in chronic illness, but it's gotten... a bit better? We have at least a few other girls now that haven't been -immediately- written off as 'too stupid to want anything but marriage' and questionable grasps on how corsetry works and fit. (I'm not entirely convinced that adding pants UNDER some of these skirts wouldn't have just created more chances for fabric tangling) but she's at least not magically the only girl ever who wanted 'more' than sewing.

Although the MC is very ready to write off everyone who's actually met her as being 'just' sick even though they all seem very impressed by her skills and have made no effort to spare her rigorous training like the rest of them, though they did make allowance for her inability to climb a staircase safely.

This may just be a flaw in the MC, she's been very set on saying -everyone- writes her off like this except her dead father so she may just be incapable imagining anyone else sees her any other way than that... except for Henri who is kind of -obviously- our intended beau character who she never sees as looking down on her for some reason. Just the girls.

Edit:

Still digging the cover though, the artist CLEARLY was inspired by that cat-and-knives meme and it's kinda hillarious and I love it.

[dragonsanddustjackets]

i just finished one for all by lillie lainoff and AHHH i loved it so much, if you’re a found family enjoyer i highly recommend this it was so good

[bookcoversonly]

Title: One for All | Author: Lillie Lainoff | Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2022)

[magnificentmonet]

[illustration-alcove]

Kevin Tong's illustrated book cover for Lillie Lainoff's One for All.

[radedneko]

"We are not the ones who are written into history. We are the ones who ensure history exists to be written."

~One For All by Lillie Lainoff

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Sisterhood of the Stab Stab

Both teenage asthmatic me and 20-year-old newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis me desperately needed this book, and I am so, so grateful that 30-year-old me had the chance to read it so I can point kids and peers who might need this book as badly as I did toward it. This book has just stunningly well-done chronic illness (specifically POTs) representation, and some really excellent LGBTQ+ representation. It's also rare I get in on preorder goodies, but when I saw how beautiful these character cards were, I couldn't resist! Let's talk One for All.

The tagline for this book is a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, but honestly the chronic illness representation is what made this book so impactful for me. I'm not a POTsie, but I knew exactly how the crushing fatigue, the constant fight against your own body, and the cruel responses of people around you feel when you have hard physical limits.

Tania is a lovely character to follow and share a headspace with throughout the book. Her complex relationships with her parents, her peers, her musketeer mentor, and her fellow lady musketeers are nuanced and always interesting. As a former dancer (the RA didn't actually kill that activity for me, that was the pandemic), I also strongly identified with Tania's insistence on honing her skills in her chosen sport--fencing--to the fullest extent of her abilities, and accommodating the very real physical limitations her body has rather than pushing to try to be like fencers without POTs. The space that Tania and the other musketeers make to accommodate the POTs rather than trying to magically fix it, ignore it, or insist that Tania could somehow "overcome" it is absolutely incredible. I would love for that accommodation to be the norm rather than the vanishingly rare exception.

Tania is not the only kickass character, however. Our other three lady musketeers are full, round characters who grow with Tania even as they prove that they will never ever let her fall. Each of our girls has a clear character all her own, and they mesh with and bup up against each other's personalities in ways that were never not a treat to see.

Simply put, I adore this book and cannot say enough good things about it. I'm hopeful that we get more stories with Tania and the rest of the sisterhood of the stab stab.

[a-chorus-of-storytellers]

„They may not be the Musketeers I’d imagined. But they were better, because they were mine. And I knew, as I looked at them and saw the cold steely resolve inside me mirrored in their eyes, that I was theirs.“

[astralbooks]

One for All - Lillie Lainoff

Read: 06/02/2023

Rating: 4/5

Rep: main character with POTS, sapphic side characters, f/f side relationship

CW: ableism, death of a parent, referenced sexual assault

Tania is the daughter of a former musketeer. Her childhood spent fencing with her father and hearing all about his adventures has led to her wanting nothing more than to follow in his footsteps. Following her father’s mysterious death, Tania is sent to a finishing school in Paris, only to learn that this school is secretly a training ground for young girls to become musketeers themselves.

The most important relationships in this book is the friendship Tania builds with the other girls at the school. Théa, Portia, and Aria all welcome Tania into their group right from the start and their friendship was really lovely to read about. They’re all fiercely supportive of each other and love each other deeply, and they celebrate each other’s successes rather than constantly trying to be better than each other. Being a musketeer means working well as a team, which isn’t a problem here. You could definitely use the term ‘found family’ to describe these four.

The romance element of this book is a more minor plot point than the relationships between the girls. I wasn’t a huge fan of it for a lot of the book, and there’s a particular incident that I found frustrating due to how blown out of proportion everything got. However, I did like the eventual direction that this romance went in. I thought it was interesting, and something that you don’t see all that often. I would suggest that you don’t go into this expecting a capital R Romance because if you do then you’re going to be disappointed.

Tania’s POTS affects nearly everything she does, and so it’s naturally almost always on her mind. At the start of the book she’s surrounded by people in her hometown who think that because Tania is disabled she must be weak and not worth spending their time on, which of course isn’t true, but ableism like this is something that real disabled people unfortunately face every day. As the book goes on Tania starts to receive the support and accommodations she needs, and with this support Tania is able to thrive and achieve the things she’s always wanted to be able to do. I hope that this book can pave the way for even more depictions of characters with POTS and other chronic conditions going forwards.

In all, I had a good time reading this one. If anything about the book’s description has caught your attention then I’d recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

[desdasiwrites]

– Lillie Lainoff, One for All

[thebibliosphere]

Feel free to ignore, but your post about your phys. therapist bringing up Fourth Wing reminded me of a book I actually did like. It's YA and based on the three musketeers except the protagonist has POTS. it's called One for All by Lillie Lainoff. I thought it was fun.

Lillie and I are actually mutual acquaintances so I’m perhaps bias, (I’m not, I read the book before we met) but I think One For All is great!