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sophia_sol) wrote2018-08-20 08:56 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2018-08-20 08:56 pm
Sorrow's Knot, by Erin Bow
Okay, where to start on this book? It's a very well written book in many ways, as I expect from Erin Bow, and I cared a lot about the characters, and the worldbuilding was interesting, and I found the book compelling throughout, but it had several significant features that made me varyingly uncomfortable and ultimately got in the way of being able to love this book.
1. It is a story set among indigenous people of Fantasy North America, and the entire plot of the book is about these indigenous people learning that one of their traditions is Bad and Dangerous. That does not sit right to me, in the context of a book written by a white person.
2. The climax of the book features our main character tied up to a tree to die and then come back to life in order to save her people. Which comes across to me a liiiittle too much like a Jesus reference for a book about a non-Christian culture.
3. The main characters live in a village that is nearly entirely women; there's only a few adult men. In this village it is also explicitly seen as weird to engage in a pair-bonding relationship with someone. Should this premise not result in lots of f/f poly amongst the community? And yet there is not a whisper in the entire book of any woman being in any kind of non-platonic relationship with another woman. And all three of the main trio of characters have a heterosexual pair-bonding romance experience (admittedly two of them with each other but still). This is all just extraordinarily implausible to me given the context. Do queer people not exist in this universe?
Anyways I still utterly adore the other three books Erin Bow has written. But I was disappointed by this book given what I'd come to expect from her!
1. It is a story set among indigenous people of Fantasy North America, and the entire plot of the book is about these indigenous people learning that one of their traditions is Bad and Dangerous. That does not sit right to me, in the context of a book written by a white person.
2. The climax of the book features our main character tied up to a tree to die and then come back to life in order to save her people. Which comes across to me a liiiittle too much like a Jesus reference for a book about a non-Christian culture.
3. The main characters live in a village that is nearly entirely women; there's only a few adult men. In this village it is also explicitly seen as weird to engage in a pair-bonding relationship with someone. Should this premise not result in lots of f/f poly amongst the community? And yet there is not a whisper in the entire book of any woman being in any kind of non-platonic relationship with another woman. And all three of the main trio of characters have a heterosexual pair-bonding romance experience (admittedly two of them with each other but still). This is all just extraordinarily implausible to me given the context. Do queer people not exist in this universe?
Anyways I still utterly adore the other three books Erin Bow has written. But I was disappointed by this book given what I'd come to expect from her!
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