This was such a mind-trip of a book, it almost feels like it was all a dream. The writing is so soft and tinged with a palpable sense of quiet wonder and whimsy. It is at different times tender, lovely, lonely, mournful, haunted, anguished, reverent, and magical, but always in such layered and beautifully subtle ways.

This book is SO smart and intricate, especially in the first half, but the author is just THAT skilled, and had such a clear sense of what she wanted to do, that the experience of reading it feels…simple. There were parts where I was thinking about how each sentence and section has meaning upon meaning heaped onto it, woven together with an impressive complexity and deftness, but it’s crafted as naturally as water flowing downhill. The tone and style are so endearing and charming and delightful, it’s impossible not to fall a little bit in love with the narrator. It’s a book that manages to make time stand completely and perfectly still, while also feeling a bit fleeting, somehow? It felt a bit ephemeral, a bit insubstantial, a bit not-there around the edges. As if I could look away from the pages for a moment, and the words would have disappeared when I looked back down, gone with the passing clouds.

In a way - and hopefully this is not too spoiler-y, lol - this is a book about endings, and like all endings, it is not without its unique anguishes. But it’s all so enchanting to get lost in it.

I will say that this book feels more about the Experience TM than it is about the plot and such. There is a plot, but it’s quite simplistic. Basically everything is wrapped up at the climax, and I wished that there were some points that were explored with more depth or complexity given how skillfully the author had built up to them in the first half. They were interesting and cool! I wanted to know more! And it felt like a little bit of a let-down to just breeze over everything the way that the book did. But, I still really enjoyed this regardless. It’s all just so dang clever.

⭐ 4.1/5 stars

Rating: 3 of 5 / Advanced Reader Copy received from NetGalley ★★★☆☆ [This is a long one oops lol]

Book Summary

On Elverdine Isle, our FMC's thirst for revenge on the person who killed her parents turns into a fast-paced story of twists & turns that leads her to confront every discomfort she's been subconsciously running away from. Forced to work with her enemy who she's known since she was little, our FMC must break the rules and embrace a dark past in order to save everyone on the Isle.

My Thoughts

I really enjoyed the second half of the plot, though some of the twists were quite predictable given how the author sets it up, gives the hints, etc. I went through a few possible theories about the FMC that turned out to be partly true, as well as half-predicting the twists in the end—I can't say it truly shocked me because the twists seemed pretty obvious to me as I read on, and it also logically made a lot of sense so I was thinking in that direction already.

I think the side characters all have great potential, a found family group bond over intense trauma lol and I do look forward to their shenanigans in future installments.

The world-building and the magic was pretty surface level, but for a YA "romantasy" book, it did the job and it's been baked at a decent temperature so that the plot can work where it needs to. I was immersed enough in how the magic connected with the residents of the island, but I do feel like it could still be developed a bit more. There are some areas where the explanation or use of magic is convenient, but it doesn't really make sense. Like if I had been paying very close attention, I could find a few magical plot holes. There could be some improvement in the world-building, but so far, it fits in the story, it's believable for the most part, and it keeps the story moving.

The romance was... whatever lol. The world and plot were exciting enough that I didn't care much about the development of the FMC's romance with the love interest, but they had some tender moments where I believed it. I would be very interested in reading the second book in the MMC's POV this time around.

Criticism (I start bitching) ~ vague spoilers ahead

Sigh...

✧˖° Over-explanation First of all, the amount of em dashes the author uses - GOOD GOD! Every single page, I would be surprised if there weren't, at the very least, 2-3 em dashes. And not only that, majority of the em dash uses were to immediately explain something that had been mentioned. Like the hunters—the guys in the red cloaks—are the good guys. And FMC held her tears—she didn't want to show emotion. ENOUGH! I am tired of editors and publishers keeping this stuff in there because their readers are dumb. Let your readers be dumb then!! Let them figure out how to use context clues to understand the emotions and meaning hidden in text. Let reading be fun again!!!

Anyway. Idc if the audience is intended for young adults. I was literally reading The Da Vinci Code for some reason when I was their age. Let people figure shit out or suffer from a small brain, idgaf!!

✧˖° Awkward Dialogue Sometimes when the characters are talking, it reads like prose... and majority of the characters are under 20. Fantasy world or not, they do not talk like that, or at least they are not consistent in talking like that. Aside from the tone of each character being very similar to each other that it's hard to distinguish who is talking when they start explaining some parts of the world that the reader needs to understand, the constant re-stating of facts and descriptions within dialogue is distracting and unrealistic.

Here's the formula: "I should [action]," Character B says. [Description of why Character B is doing said action that definitely affects Character A].

I know it's the common practice to assume the reader is dumb asf and needs handholding to understand something, but this does not help the media literacy, it actually encourages readers NOT to use their brains. They WILL learn to think critically if you give them the tools.

One specific example is when a Character A says something like, "I'll just... go for a walk" and then right after the dialogue, the narration goes, "He couldn't be more obvious about giving them privacy." Well yes ! We understand this already. If you remove the explanation and just had that character leave after he said he's going for a walk, we could see that the other characters now have the privacy they speak of! Would you look at that!!??? 🤠

Another example, WHY would Character C give Character B a very detailed description of Character A's personality, his hidden desire, his playfulness.

1. They're 17/18 years old - their ass is not giving you an essay on how Character A moves through life as if haunted by a memory.
2. Less is more - sometimes when characters say very little, the meanings are more impactful by the words they DO NOT SAY and I wish more authors would remember this.

“[…] it doesn’t take an alchemist to know that mixing charm, intelligence, and confidence that borders on arrogance is a recipe for disaster—but, Elders, even I can admit that he’s beautiful to look at.”

Madam, no matter the age, no one talks like this. No one is giving you a 5-page essay on a crusty 18 year-old dude. Even when the KIDS had dialogue, it was strange. What 11-year-old says “This is what your parents would want. You’re going to drown in guilt otherwise.” 🥴 Drown in guilt??? Who is teaching him figurative language at this age?

Similarly, the journal entries also have its own issue where it starts getting weird/awkward when the format of the journal starts to include dialogue. It's no longer treated as a journal, but the person writing it is now writing as a book, with full-on dialogue and descriptions of the speaker's eyes and inner worries, etc. That is not the point of a journal, no one writes in a journal like that. If you can't be consistent with it, either remove the journal or remove the dialogue. You cannot have both, I'm sorry. It's not giving !

An example of this is when the journaler writes "But you'll—" I tried, for the thousandth time. And then writes the next piece of dialogue. Instead of "I tried to tell her for the thousandth time but she kept cutting me off," which is more journal-like and believable imo. I know the purpose of the journal is to show what happened in the past and how the present state of the Isle got to where it's at, but the inconsistency is distracting.

ALSO! There are two journal writers yet they have almost the exact same writing style. The underlining, the excessive paragraph breaks to express intensity and suspense, the EM DASHES! Yes, these characters ALSO use em dashes just like the author does in the narration of the book, and it is used exactly how it is used throughout the book. I want each character to have a unique tone, so these parts of the story were disappointing to me, even though I was very interested in the content of the journal entries themselves.

✧˖° Loose Plotting Some actions didn't make sense to me, even after all the twists were revealed. Mainly three things I noted while reading:

1. Why was it so easy for the main characters to slip away from the prison? The security of the Nox police force is TRASH!
2. The learning of alchemy by one of the characters and immediately having an elixir handy seemed a bit too convenient, especially knowing that this kind of alchemy is ancient, illegal, and possibly highly advanced.
3. [ENDING SPOILER] If the main character remembered that the Reaper Priest had blackened veins when her parents died, and no one but hunters, reapers, or mages were supposed to see those blackened veins, why wasn't she curious about why she could see this? Which leads to the next issue...

✧˖° FMC She seemed very arrogant for someone who knew almost NOTHING! She was like an empty tea cup (flat) waiting for the rest of the characters and the final plot to fill up her tea cup (give her knowledge). In the beginning, she's set up to be this highly trained professional, very intuitive, and advanced among her peers. But I don't really see that, other than she is so incredibly stubborn on what she thinks she knows, and whatever she knows, it HAS to be true. There weren't any moments in the VERY UNIQUE AND EYE-OPENING SITUATIONS where she'd stop to question her reality, question the tragedy that shaped her, etc. Where is the intuitive-ness? Is that only when it comes to sensing magic, and that's it? She didn't even realize her friend was using magic in her alchemy. She didn't question how her heightened magic senses related to her Impartation, nor was she interested in the reason she "blacked out" when her parents died.

And while she was with the MMC, he seemed 1000% more knowledgeable than her, more attuned, more gifted, more mature, which I believe exposed her character to be a little underdeveloped, or at the very least, uninteresting. Yes, she can fight and hold her own, she has quick reflexes, and she's a hard worker. But she's very much just some teenager as well, which doesn't sit well when the MMC is only 1 year older and feels like he's got the whole world figured out.

✧˖° Romance I will admit, I am not a romantasy girlie, but I do enjoy romance when it's done well. Even YA romance should have standards, which is why I will mention this: the romance was cliche, juvenile, and overdone. We had the WEIRDEST parts for the FMC to notice when the MMC looks good and hot - and why is it usually after they're injured to the point of being 5 seconds away from death, or right after she uncovers her deepest, darkest secret, and she notices him look out the window, VERY HOTLY. It makes the FMC seem so shallow, like be fr.

I never believed they were "enemies" in the first place because the FMC had been ogling him from the first instance. Enemies would hate each other, the sight of each other, and especially since the FMC believes the MMC left her to follow the path of the person who KILLED HER PARENTS, there should be more hatred than that. But she gets bricked up at the littlest things, and he eats it up every time. This is why I couldn't take the witty banter seriously - like girl I can't defend you lol, you never hated him and it shows!

I would have liked if they showed a bit more of the main characters having a crush on each other as kids, so that when they eventually get together RIGHT AFTER the truth is revealed, it's not like a "ok you know the truth now, we can be together like we've always wanted" type of moment lol.

Final Thoughts

Anyway. It does what it's supposed to as a YA novel, and it is at the very least interesting (more so than some YA where the world building is trash). I would read the second installment purely because of the cliff-hanger, and I'm invested in the characters, even if I had a lot of criticism in the writing in general lol.

(Strap in, this might get long!) First off, I'll say that I LOVED the world Adeyemi created for this book. I loved the whole conceit of the different types of magic users relating to different gods, I loved how magic is set up to be persecuted, I loved that our real-world cultural touchpoints all specifically relate to the book's pseudo-Nigerian setting. It also sent me down a little rabbit hole of Yoruba, a language I know basically nothing about, but it was a fun sidebar for a linguist! (I did not love the characters' names as viewed through the assumed historical language, place, and period lenses, but that's always a personal pet peeve of mine and I don't let it affect my rating)

I also loved the wide view of the story - I always enjoy a good quest, and this was a classic one. Tracking down mystical objects while being pursued by enemies is a well-worn trope, but one I really like. The device of "this is the will of the gods, and it will always end up the way they plan" probably won't suit some people, but I think it works really well here when combined with the tension of the world around the characters.

Unfortunately, this is more or less where the good stops for me (besides a brilliant ending!). This is a YA book, and they tend to be hit or miss for me, depending on the characters' decision making and how heavy-handed the lessons and metaphors are. This book falls firmly into the "annoying characters making decisions they know are bad" and "hit-you-over-the-head with lessons and metaphors" categories. Those with higher tolerance for these kinds of things will definitely have a better time with the book, because, aside from that, the writing is good and, for the most part, consistently compelling.

Besides Amari, who's usually fine, these characters are some of the most annoying and frustrating I've come across recently. I guess the upside is that their annoyingness is consistent with their characters, and they're not usually making poor decisions just for the sake of the story (although I can think of one glaring example of this happening).

The "romances" were incredibly flat and forced, and frankly unnecessary to the story except to set up points of drama and potential betrayal. With so much going on and so much opportunity for more nuance and worldbuilding, I was frustrated and annoyed by the space given to these romances, especially when they often serve to set the characters up to make even more bad decisions.

Now we come to Inan, one of the least successful "complex" characters I've read in quite a while and one I have to rant on a little. His character seems to want to serve as the equivalent of those sort of wishy-washy liberals who condemn police brutality but think it's the result of "a few bad apples", but in reality he's just written inconsistently. He has the memory of a goldfish, and the last thing he sees/hears is the only background that informs his decisions in the next scene. For example, he witnesses - and quite literally feels - the systemic despair and fear of the oppressed class, but once he sees that the guards are genuinely scared of magic, his sympathy changes to them. He sees the king's guards massacring dozens of unarmed people (including children) unprovoked and thinks it's the worst thing he's ever seen, but then he sees some guards get killed by magic later in retaliation, and that becomes the worst thing he's ever seen, with him explicitly saying that it's worse than the previous massacre. "At least then [in the original massacre of civilians], the soldiers were the first to strike. But now their premature fear seems justified."

It's not that he's torn between nuances or loyalties: no, he states numerous times that he's all in on helping the oppressed once he learns more about the issue, and also states (and truly seems to believe) that what the king and guards are doing is wrong. Once he witnesses the facts, there's no ongoing tension between what he was brought up to believe and what he believes now; he just switches based on the last thing that's happened. This is not to say that there aren't people out there who are like Inan; there definitely are. But I don't think anyone wants to read about those people, because they're boring, irritating, and inconsistent. And those types of characters certainly shouldn't be love interests!

I understand why Adeyemi included a character like him in the book. With an in-your-face-literal metaphor like the main one here, you might want someone to stand in for the centrist bystanders who wring their hands but do nothing. Inan might as well be wearing a "Guards Lives Matter" pin, even after he personally witnesses shocking examples of "guard brutality".

But when the book is meant to teach you a lesson about authoritarian structures, you want those types of characters to have some kind of ongoing development that builds and either leads them to a more proactive stance, or to retreat back into what they knew growing up. Unfortunately, Inan's character doesn't grow or evolve so much as it just flip-flops and flounders in order to suit the plot.

I truly believe that YA books can include nuanced, compelling characterization and exploration of issues, and I've seen it done well, so it really annoys me when it feels like those things are dumbed down. I can't think of another reason we have Inan as a POV character except as a device to get inside the head of people like him, rather than getting to know him as an individual. Tzain never gets a POV chapter, so it's not like both siblings sets are structured as POVs. The addition of Inan's POV therefore feels like just the easiest way to get an exploration of centrists, instead of finding a way to do it that fits better into the story structure.

Inan is definitely the worst example, but I really couldn't get into any of the characters as individuals until the very end. I'll add, though, that I did really like the end of the book; I think it was a great way to wrap up this part of the story and tease the next book. Unfortunately, because I just can't with these characters, I won't be reading the next ones in the series. It's a shame, because I would really love to read more set in this world, but with different characters - or maybe just not a YA book.

Amazing book about an amazing girl. I loved the plot and characters and the way the book portrays bullying from all sides, bringing attention to victims. I also liked the comment about autistic protagonists and I think that the journey both twins went on would have worked from the allistic perspective as well which makes the story so much richer yet shinning spotlight on the autistic perspective.

Interesting middle grade epistolary novel centered on grief and queerness. Less adventure-centered than I might have anticipated, but still enjoyable.

Fuck it, I'm giving it 4 stars. Got me out of a slump, the pages were turning fast, even if the story wasn't that big of a deal. It didn't blow my head off, but I had a lot of fun reading, the drawing thing was really creative. The antagonist was well-written, they grew on me, sometimes I felt bad for them, sometimes I hated them. The other characters were fine, except for the one that the story wants you to REALLY hate. (Fair enough I did hate them.) The happy end made me glad, its so rare in horror. Altough I wouldn't really call this book a horror, it wasn't that scary, more thriller vibes.

I started this book mainly cause I wanted to read a book narrated by Natalie Naudus and, cause I’d heard some good things about it – and I was not disappointed.

Bat Eater is a multilayered exploration of horror which are intricately interconnected. Overarching, of course, is the horror of the pandemic – the fear of infection and contamination, the drastic change to public life and the city. It may not have been the cause for anti-Asian racism but it definitely is the catalyst for a new wave of hate flooding NYC. Then there is the horror of losing the one person that you could trust to be there, that knew you, and the fear of never being known again – mixed with supernatural horror and the dread that starts rising once Cora cleans up the apartments of more and more Asian women murdered in cold blood.

This mix of themes kept me on my feet through the course of the book – not once did I feel bored (I read it within three days so you know I was hooked). Cora has an amazing character arc and, even with all the horrors and the constant fear, there are moments of real joy and connection speckled throughout the book that lighten it up.

I’d recommend this to everyone who can handle the gore and horror – and I wanna give a special shoutout to the narrator, Natalie Naudus. There is a reason she is as renowned in her field as she is, and she did an amazing job at bringing this book to life. This is one of the moments where the narration elevates an already amazing prose which made this book one of my favourite reads this year.

just what i needed honestly. lifes bad and this was simple enough and interesting enough for me to forget about that for a second! i only really knew a couple of the characters, the others were just names to me, but i really enjoyed ratthi, mensah & murderbot.

i really enjoyed the ending, and i'm interested to see what will happen in the second novella. ˙ᵕ˙

pardon me while I sound like a contemporary dust jacket marketing blurb - this is like a super combo of Station Eleven + Pluribus + Last of Us with a new take on the big bad looming player vs environment 'other' that I found really compelling. A gorgeous reading experience, was so close to 5 stars all the way but some unnameable (lol, relevant) je ne sais quoi keep it just shy of perfection for me. High high rec.

Once upon a time there were three sisters. One was wise, one was nurturing and one was wild. The sisters were estranged, but now reunited in the city of New Salem in late 19th-century America. These sisters are witches, and they are angry.

What a book. I cannot believe it took me so long to read this. I love sister stories, and yet this has been sat on my shelf since its publication. The sisters, Bella, Agnes and Juniper are our main characters, and they don't love each other. Or do they? The relationship between the three sisters was the true centre of the story. Sisterhood is a bond that is difficult to describe, but this book does it so incredibly well.

These three were not lone revolutionaries, however. The notion of sisterhood is thrown wide here, collecting friends and other allies, all of them together creating a force for change, all of them needing each other to move forward. This collective of people was magical in itself. Beliefs needed to be challenged, ones that are deeply rooted over years of oppressive systems pushing fear of those who are somehow different. Seeing this group form over the pages was brilliant.

While this is a fantasy story about witches, real history lies within. Various US events are mirrored here, including women's suffrage and witch burnings. These are expertly woven into a plot that is part dark fairy-tale and part feminist history.

I have also very quickly come to realise that Alix E. Harrow's writing is perfect for me. It's lyrical and evocative and haunting and I drank it up. I think I highlighted more in this book than I have in any other book I've read this year so far.

I already can't wait to read it again. If you are like me and have had this sitting around unread, change that.

Another beloved childhood read 🫶🐴

The worldbuilding is interesting, but not worth the ridiculous amount of infodumping, repetition, or the frankly abysmal prose.

Quotes taken from my review copy, so bear in mind any or all of these could be edited in the final version of the book.

Then the pain, bursting like an overripe fruit, bloomed from she got hit and surged everywhere, until even the tips of her hair hurt.

I’m assuming ‘from she got hit’ is a genuine typo, but even if it’s meant to be ‘from where she got hit and surged everywhere’, that’s just…really clunky and basic?

Only Mara didn’t feel threatened. She was more than enthralled.

???

The boy’s skull was crushed and he died sometime between the first stone and the last.

Yeah no duh, that’s how stoning someone to death works?

walking like they had somewhere of vital importance to go.

This sounds wrong, even though it technically isn’t, because we usually hear this phrased as ‘somewhere of vital importance to BE’. I don’t know how to explain that storytellers are meant to be aware of this kind of thing.

just as ready to raise its colossal fist and ground its own people into dust.

That’s definitely meant to be ‘grind’.

the flames licked at Queen Seyrah’s face, slowly melting it into black ash.

You can’t melt something into ash, wtf?

As such, there was no way of predicting how the classes would go, and no way of preparing for them, which was how Mara had managed to–hah–survive most of her classes so far.

After rereading this a couple of times, I THINK this is saying that Mara has survived her previous classes by preparing for them, and that won’t work this time because she doesn’t know what to prepare for. But WOW is that badly phrased.

Life was good for Velingard’s only Earth Artist. Well, as far as Kaian knew, anyway.

For context, Kaian IS Velingard’s only Earth Artist. This sounds like as far as he knows, his own life is good. When I THINK what this is meant to say is that he’s the only Earth Artist around as far as he knows.

He’d dismissed them as sons of Prestige employees or some other, but one in particular caught his eye.

Some other what?

His instincts were no longer pricking up, they were full-on shouting, trying to catch his attention.

‘Pricking up’ sounds terrible.

But when he met Sergeant’s Cormack’s eye, something inside it reached past all those layers of conscious thought, ripping through them and going straight into the part of his brain that reacted based on just one single need: survival.

Again, this is so unbelievably clunky.

I wish I was surprised that a best-selling author can write like this and still be a bestseller. BLEGH.

I've been trying to figure out how to review this without spoilers. It's hard, but I'll do my best.

This story is told through three different POVs:

1. Mahindan is a Tamil refugee who escaped a camp in Sri Lanka with his young son and is seeking asylum in Canada along with several hundred other Tamil refugees.

2. Priya is a first-generation Tamil-Canadian intern lawyer whose new mentor is representing Mahindan and several other refugees. She grew up with only a partial understanding of what brought her parents to Canada, and even less of what her uncle was fleeing when he joined them.

3. Grace is a third-generation Japanese-Canadian adjudicator who has just recently been moved from transportation to immigration, and is naturally feeling VERY out of her depth. At home, she's caring for her mother, Kumi, who has Alzheimer's and who has begun telling Grace's pre-teen daughters about her childhood in an internment camp during the war and about how Canada stole her parents' business and property while they were interred.

All three of these POVs blend well to demonstrate how complex and nuanced people's lives are, and how impossible it can be to know the truth of a situation. It also illustrates how important empathy is and how life-changing it can be.

I want to start off by saying that I was really excited for this book and was very much hoping to like it. I don't remember how or when I heard about it, but I know that I thought "a fictionalized account of a true story of two sisters (the Trung sisters) in Ancient Vietnam who led a successful revolution against an oppressive colonizing regime? sign me up!"

I think with that prompt, it should not be difficult to craft a good narrative. You have all of the ingredients for an action-packed plot already there for you! That being said, I couldn't write a good novel to save my life, so who am I to judge? (I say as I begin this negative review).

This book disappointed me for several reasons. For starters, the prose was very detached at points. I felt at parts like I was reading nonfiction and in the end it began to feel like a chore to pick it up. There were several instances where the author simply listed the emotions that a character was feeling, instead of using any evocative language or descriptions. When the author did provide emotive descriptions, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed! It wasn't horrible across the board.

The tendency to tell and not show expanded to the world-building as well. In many places, the author told the reader that the Han Chinese regime was oppressive to the Lac Viet people whose lands they had colonized; that they imposed their own customs, their language, their gods, etc. This was rarely, if ever, shown. One of the only scenes which succeeded in illustrating the oppressive nature of this regime involved gratuitous violence committed against a character who only existed as a plot device to depict the cruelty of others. While I appreciated that the author demonstrated that the cruelty of humanity was not the sole province of the Han Chinese, but rather extended to the oppressed people as well, I didn't appreciate how he chose to show it. It is surely possible to portray the cruelty of a regime without denying a character his humanity.

What would have really helped to set the scenes were more depictions of the cultural restrictions placed on Lac Viet society by the Han Chinese. There was one mention of how a specific province/region was academically restricted, but this was not elaborated on in any way. I would like to see how this operated!

The author did do a really great job of describing the battle scenes towards the end of the novel, especially the use of bronze drums as an instrument of war. I tend to dislike battle scenes, but found these ones to be just the right length and have just the right amount of intrigue/strategy to keep me engaged.

A large theme of the novel was the imposition of patriarchal gender norms to Lac Viet society which were foreign to them. I was skeptical going in about a book about female revolutionary heroes written by a man, and I was right about that in the end. This is where my largest issues reside. Early on in the novel, we are told:

Marriage is an institution forced on us by the Han.

Based on this, I assumed that that meant marriage as an institution did not exist in Lac Viet society. This was repeated several times throughout the novel, which made it pretty clear to me that the reader was meant to conclude that marriage did not exist in Lac Viet society.

I found this to be really interesting, so I decided to look online and read more about it. However, whereas various sources did explain that Lac Viet society was matrilineal or matrilocal in nature, marriage did exist. It just wasn't patriarchal; that is, the husband did not become the owner of his wife and their children. Inheritance passed through the mother's side, and women were able to both own land and inherit.

This confused me, as the author was insistent that it was marriage itself that the Han imposed, not just a specific definition of marriage (although this got a bit muddy at parts). This was further compounded by the fact that, at one point, one of the two sisters did marry. In a protest against Han colonialism, they married in a traditional Lac Viet ceremony, wearing traditional Lac Viet wedding garb. Why would a culture in which marriage did not exist as an institution have traditional wedding customs?

Later on, the author seems to backtrack on his statement about marriage, by mentioning that marriage existed in other Lac Viet provinces, just not the one where the Trung sisters were from. In the end, I'm not sure what the author meant to convey on this point, but it made me question the reliability of every thing presented as fact about Lac Viet society in the book.

The author also seemed unable to imagine a matrilineal society not formed around modern gender norms. It was pretty similar to contemporary patriarchal society except that women were sexually promiscuous without (much) judgment, marriage (maybe) didn't exist, and women went into war. When it came to the familial dynamics in the Trung family itself, the father made the decisions about his daughter's lives and very much gave "the man of the house" energy. None of the men acted like they deferred to women for anything, and women weren't taking roles outside of traditionally female ones (cook, housewife) until the Trung sisters began their rebellion.

Nguyen did not seem to consider that attitudes about gender and relations between individuals would be different in a society where women possessed more power and autonomy.

I'm obviously not an expert on Lac Viet society (this having been my first foray into learning about it), but I was excited to read a book set in a matrilineal society and felt cheated. This was further exacerbated by the author's choice to have not one, but two forbidden love plots (which I learned from reading up on the Trung sisters were entirely made up). The idea of the sisters rebelling against their father by choosing to become involved with men he did not approve of really rubbed me the wrong way. I also did not appreciate the scene where a woman gave birth in the middle of a battlefield. Was this really necessary?

I stuck with this book because I wanted to get to the actual revolution bit (which was by far the most interesting part of it, but didn't come about until the last third). I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, which saddens me because it had the potential to be amazing!

I love cannibalism. I didn’t love this. Still unsure what was meant to be happening. Felt like it was trying to be a folklore about feral women but just missed all of the marks of what makes a story like this compelling.

Disappointing. Wish I loved it.

A sharp, bite-sized satire that blends Love Island, Big Brother and Survivor into one fucked-up little anti-consumerist package.