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aroaessidhe · 2 months

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2024 reads / storygraph

Masquerade

historical fiction set in 15th century West Africa

follows a young woman from Timbuktu, recently conquered by the the warrior king of Yorùbáland

her guild of blacksmiths were already shunned as witches, and their conditions worsen under Yorùbá rule - so when she’s kidnapped by the king to be his wife, she decides to accept that it’ll be a better life for her, as long as she can get her mother’s blessing

but as months go by without her mother being found, and political tensions rise, she must decide what she wants

#masquerade #aroaessidhe 2024 reads #ahh... I enjoyed this in the beginning but I ended up being SO frustrated by the MCs decisions and inconsistencies.#click the storygraph link above to read all my thoughts tbh im not gonna copy everything in here #she’s like man this guy kidnapped me and is drugging me and treats me like an object and probably is lying about trying to find my mother :#well I should definitely try and uncover and tell him about this uprising happening under his nose so I can help him trust me!#she tells us she’s desperate for freedom and safety and autonomy and yet she’s doing so much to stay with this man who #she’s AWARE is NOT giving her autonomy AND she doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s freedom or autonomy?#she doesn’t even WONDER about the slave revolts or blacksmith strikes other than how can she stop them?#she’s naive and innocent but she’s also viewed as this brilliant military strategist and cunning at court politics #other than these moments she’s very naive and doesn’t make any obvious connections about what the other women #or her mother are up to (which considering the amount of speeches about men underestimating women she makes……okay)#thing is like there was some great setup to go in some really interesting directions!#if you wanted to go down the route of her goals making her singlemindedly ruthless and selfish and morally grey and rising to power #then commit to that! make her investigate the revolution and give her a reason to betray them anyway.#if you want to make it like she TRULY had no choice in becoming what she did (because any attempt to escape or connect #with the revolution had tragic consequences) then do that! But she like…..never tried anything.#She just accepted everything and tried to help the king because…I don’t even know!#if you like hades and perspephone you won’t like this. if you don’t like hades and persephone you won’t like this.#(i thought it had just been inaccurately compared to H&P - not written to reference H&P)#agh. it could have been good!

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