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sophia_sol) wrote2022-09-29 09:12 am
sophia_sol) wrote2022-09-29 09:12 am
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, by Foz Meadows
Ohhhhhh boy. Where to start. Where to start with this. I suppose I'll start by saying that I think this is a very well-meaning book that is probably great for people who are looking for a specific kind of thing in their literature, but that person is emphatically not me and I am going to put a WHOLE lot of words of complaint after this.
This is a book that is advertised as a heartwarming queer romance plus political intrigue. I was not expecting to have extended on-screen rape in the first 25 pages. Like, there's a content warning at the beginning of the book that mentions explicit rape? But I was expecting us to work up to it, rather than be confronted with it IMMEDIATELY and at length, and before the reader has been able to build up any trust in the narrative to feel able to trust what it's going to do with this. It turns out though that it's not just that the book CONTAINS rape etc; it is actually ABOUT rape and the trauma of it and the recovery process, which you would never guess from the marketing copy or from the professional reviews I read, or even the content warning tbh. So it was really startling and uncomfortable in a bad way to be thrown into that without my expectations having been set appropriately.
So that....was an inauspicious beginning.
But even beyond that, there were a lot of fundamental things about the book that really didn't work for me in the way that they were clearly intended.
So the book is an arranged cross-cultural marriage, between Velasin, a man who has been exiled from a culture that is very sexist and homophobic, and Caethari, a man from a culture that is not either of those things.
The worldbuilding of that second culture feels a lot like the author was like, I'm going to create a culture that lives up to all my ideals!! which is so valid as a wish-fulfilment fantasy, but is not enjoyable to me as a realistic depiction of how things would work, especially in a multicultural context like this clearly is. Give me reasons why Tithena is like this, when none of the countries around it are?? But Tithenai culture has no sexism or homophobia or transphobia, everyone understands consent and it's a fundamental part of their laws and their customs, and it's understood that ritual is important when grieving a loss, including the loss of a pet or a horse. Even Tithenai food is better!
And there are two ways in which this makes other things not work for me in the book, even beyond the general issue with me not wanting my worldbuilding to be nothing but ungrounded wish fulfilment.
First: this makes the cross-cultural communication difficulties within the relationship really dissatisfying, because it's not "these two cultures do things differently and both Velasin and Caethari have to do some learning to understand each other," it's "Velasin has to learn to stop being so Ralian about everything because Ralia sucks." That's not what I read this kind of relationship dynamic for!!! It's uninteresting and reductive, imo.
Second: It makes the ways that there ARE still unquestioned issues in Tithenai culture far more uncomfortable, because I'm left being like "......does the author not realise the significant issues here?" Like, there are different legal privileges for people of the nobility, for crying out loud! And this is just fine???? Ugh, the unthinking classism throughout was a real thing. Also, although Tithenai people are generally better about Markel's inability to speak than anyone in Ralia is, there's still obviously ableism, because sign language is completely unknown in the country, nobody has ever met anyone who's mute before (or Deaf, or anything else related), and there are NO other disabled characters in the entire book. So like. If the author was trying to create a wish-fulfilment idealised culture here, I do not like it.
(And THEN the intersection between the classism and ableism as embodied by Markel made his close friendship with Velasin feel uncomfortably near to the "loyal servant" trope, too.)
(And if the point of the book is indulgent wish-fulfilment, then why so much murder and death throughout? There are SO many people who are dead by the conclusion of the novel! This is not indulgent wish-fulfilment to me!!)
And then. As if it isn't bad enough that nobility can access the judicial system through a different method than others, Our Heroes decide to work entirely extrajudicially to impose a permanent physical punishment on a person they believe deserving of it. And like, yeah, sure, the dude was a whole pile of dicks and did some extremely horrible things, but....WOW. What make you so special, my guys, that you can be judge, jury, and executioner on your own? And later in the book there's like, two sentences worth of them feeling mildly uncomfortable about this, and then it's dismissed forever. Let's not think about it! It's fine!!!!
But also why are Velasin and Caethari so intimately involved with the major criminal investigation that spans the book (....unrelated, at least at first, to the pile-of-dicks guy in the prior paragraph) in the first place? It's not either of their jobs, neither of them has particular skills or experience that would be relevant to them being the main detectives; it seems that it's just because it's attacks on them/their household and because they're nobility and can do whatever the heck they want. It would really be nice if there had been any kind of explanation of WHY they were part of the investigative team!
Which is a particularly funny complaint when I move on to the next aspect of this book I want to complain about, which is that it has a tendency to overexplain EVERYTHING. It feels like the narrative doesn't trust the reader to pick up on anything unless it's explicitly laid out. Even for something as simple as: a character says something that, from the way it's put together and the way it's said, is obviously a common saying or proverb in their culture. And then the narrative takes the time to specify that that's what it is. It's enormously irritating, and slows the whole thing down.
Relatedly, the characters are extraordinarily self aware of their own emotions and thought processes and these all get explained to the reader at length, both in the narrative and in their conversations. And they're always right in their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings! Plus people are awfully willing to extensively answer questions about all sorts of things in a way that doesn't feel naturalistic.
BUT. Sometimes the narrative deliberately chooses not to explain something, for no other reason than because I suppose the author wanted to hide a detail in order to make the later reveal more dramatic? Like when Velasin and Caethari make plans together -- on page! -- about what they're going to do with Killic when he shows up unexpectedly, but the reader isn't told what the plan is until it's enacted. This feels like cheating tbh!
Okay. Let's move on to talking about the main relationship and main characters. I've already touched on this, in the cross-cultural communication frustrations, and the way they all talk like they have swallowed a self-help book. But also. The two of them start the book foreign strangers in an arranged marriage that they feel weird about, and within DAYS completely trust and love each other. This is too fast. This is way too fast! Even with the extenuating circumstances, like yes near-death situations do make people who experience them together more closely bonded, it's still unsatisfyingly fast. I don't feel like I actually got to see them learning to know and like each other in any kind of real and deep way, despite all the extended conversations about feelings they had.
And it's fairly standard in a romance novel that gives equal pov space to both characters that both characters should get to experience a growth/development/character arc, but I really didn't feel like that was the case here. Velasin definitely gets one, but what's Caethari's? I actually feel like his arc is juuuuuuuust about to begin when the book abruptly ends. He's just discovered that his beloved younger sister has committed many crimes against him and people he loves, and then that beloved younger sister dies! But we just move RIGHT on past that and finish the book on Velasin's pov, which is all, wow isn't my relationship with Caethari amazing, the end. Again: unsatisfying.
The thing is, I can tell what kind of emotions the book was intended to invoke in the reader throughout, and none of it worked on me because I was too irritated by *gestures emphatically to all of the above* which then just made me irritated about the attempts to make me feel things! So it's possible I'm more irritated at this book than it really deserves, because despite all of the above issues, it's not overall a bad book. I'm guessing some readers find it helpful to have everything explicated in the narrative, and I'm sure many people find it affirming to get to read the story of a man who was raped getting to experience validation of the trauma, and healing, and love. And it can get tiring to constantly read books in settings where people with your identities are oppressed in various ways, so I'm guessing at least some queer people find it relieving to hang out in Tithena for the space of a book. And so on, and so forth. There are reasons the author wrote this book the way they did.
But I was reading this book at the same time as I was doing a reread of Gideon the Ninth, and the vast contrast between approaches was just.....so contrasting. And although on paper a queer secondary world fantasy romance with politics seems more likely to be my thing than a horror novel about necromancers in space, the way the two authors approach the stories mean that the necromancers are where I'm at!
One final complaint: The choice to have one character's chapters be first person and the other be limited third is weird. I've come across it before and I just do not understand it! What is the purpose behind this choice? If anyone can explain it to me, please do, because I want to understand.
Edit: oh and I can’t believe I forgot to mention! It’s supposed to be about politics but it is NOT about politics, the supposed politics are a murder mystery plot that resolves into what’s ultimately just an internal family inheritance dispute!
This is a book that is advertised as a heartwarming queer romance plus political intrigue. I was not expecting to have extended on-screen rape in the first 25 pages. Like, there's a content warning at the beginning of the book that mentions explicit rape? But I was expecting us to work up to it, rather than be confronted with it IMMEDIATELY and at length, and before the reader has been able to build up any trust in the narrative to feel able to trust what it's going to do with this. It turns out though that it's not just that the book CONTAINS rape etc; it is actually ABOUT rape and the trauma of it and the recovery process, which you would never guess from the marketing copy or from the professional reviews I read, or even the content warning tbh. So it was really startling and uncomfortable in a bad way to be thrown into that without my expectations having been set appropriately.
So that....was an inauspicious beginning.
But even beyond that, there were a lot of fundamental things about the book that really didn't work for me in the way that they were clearly intended.
So the book is an arranged cross-cultural marriage, between Velasin, a man who has been exiled from a culture that is very sexist and homophobic, and Caethari, a man from a culture that is not either of those things.
The worldbuilding of that second culture feels a lot like the author was like, I'm going to create a culture that lives up to all my ideals!! which is so valid as a wish-fulfilment fantasy, but is not enjoyable to me as a realistic depiction of how things would work, especially in a multicultural context like this clearly is. Give me reasons why Tithena is like this, when none of the countries around it are?? But Tithenai culture has no sexism or homophobia or transphobia, everyone understands consent and it's a fundamental part of their laws and their customs, and it's understood that ritual is important when grieving a loss, including the loss of a pet or a horse. Even Tithenai food is better!
And there are two ways in which this makes other things not work for me in the book, even beyond the general issue with me not wanting my worldbuilding to be nothing but ungrounded wish fulfilment.
First: this makes the cross-cultural communication difficulties within the relationship really dissatisfying, because it's not "these two cultures do things differently and both Velasin and Caethari have to do some learning to understand each other," it's "Velasin has to learn to stop being so Ralian about everything because Ralia sucks." That's not what I read this kind of relationship dynamic for!!! It's uninteresting and reductive, imo.
Second: It makes the ways that there ARE still unquestioned issues in Tithenai culture far more uncomfortable, because I'm left being like "......does the author not realise the significant issues here?" Like, there are different legal privileges for people of the nobility, for crying out loud! And this is just fine???? Ugh, the unthinking classism throughout was a real thing. Also, although Tithenai people are generally better about Markel's inability to speak than anyone in Ralia is, there's still obviously ableism, because sign language is completely unknown in the country, nobody has ever met anyone who's mute before (or Deaf, or anything else related), and there are NO other disabled characters in the entire book. So like. If the author was trying to create a wish-fulfilment idealised culture here, I do not like it.
(And THEN the intersection between the classism and ableism as embodied by Markel made his close friendship with Velasin feel uncomfortably near to the "loyal servant" trope, too.)
(And if the point of the book is indulgent wish-fulfilment, then why so much murder and death throughout? There are SO many people who are dead by the conclusion of the novel! This is not indulgent wish-fulfilment to me!!)
And then. As if it isn't bad enough that nobility can access the judicial system through a different method than others, Our Heroes decide to work entirely extrajudicially to impose a permanent physical punishment on a person they believe deserving of it. And like, yeah, sure, the dude was a whole pile of dicks and did some extremely horrible things, but....WOW. What make you so special, my guys, that you can be judge, jury, and executioner on your own? And later in the book there's like, two sentences worth of them feeling mildly uncomfortable about this, and then it's dismissed forever. Let's not think about it! It's fine!!!!
But also why are Velasin and Caethari so intimately involved with the major criminal investigation that spans the book (....unrelated, at least at first, to the pile-of-dicks guy in the prior paragraph) in the first place? It's not either of their jobs, neither of them has particular skills or experience that would be relevant to them being the main detectives; it seems that it's just because it's attacks on them/their household and because they're nobility and can do whatever the heck they want. It would really be nice if there had been any kind of explanation of WHY they were part of the investigative team!
Which is a particularly funny complaint when I move on to the next aspect of this book I want to complain about, which is that it has a tendency to overexplain EVERYTHING. It feels like the narrative doesn't trust the reader to pick up on anything unless it's explicitly laid out. Even for something as simple as: a character says something that, from the way it's put together and the way it's said, is obviously a common saying or proverb in their culture. And then the narrative takes the time to specify that that's what it is. It's enormously irritating, and slows the whole thing down.
Relatedly, the characters are extraordinarily self aware of their own emotions and thought processes and these all get explained to the reader at length, both in the narrative and in their conversations. And they're always right in their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings! Plus people are awfully willing to extensively answer questions about all sorts of things in a way that doesn't feel naturalistic.
BUT. Sometimes the narrative deliberately chooses not to explain something, for no other reason than because I suppose the author wanted to hide a detail in order to make the later reveal more dramatic? Like when Velasin and Caethari make plans together -- on page! -- about what they're going to do with Killic when he shows up unexpectedly, but the reader isn't told what the plan is until it's enacted. This feels like cheating tbh!
Okay. Let's move on to talking about the main relationship and main characters. I've already touched on this, in the cross-cultural communication frustrations, and the way they all talk like they have swallowed a self-help book. But also. The two of them start the book foreign strangers in an arranged marriage that they feel weird about, and within DAYS completely trust and love each other. This is too fast. This is way too fast! Even with the extenuating circumstances, like yes near-death situations do make people who experience them together more closely bonded, it's still unsatisfyingly fast. I don't feel like I actually got to see them learning to know and like each other in any kind of real and deep way, despite all the extended conversations about feelings they had.
And it's fairly standard in a romance novel that gives equal pov space to both characters that both characters should get to experience a growth/development/character arc, but I really didn't feel like that was the case here. Velasin definitely gets one, but what's Caethari's? I actually feel like his arc is juuuuuuuust about to begin when the book abruptly ends. He's just discovered that his beloved younger sister has committed many crimes against him and people he loves, and then that beloved younger sister dies! But we just move RIGHT on past that and finish the book on Velasin's pov, which is all, wow isn't my relationship with Caethari amazing, the end. Again: unsatisfying.
The thing is, I can tell what kind of emotions the book was intended to invoke in the reader throughout, and none of it worked on me because I was too irritated by *gestures emphatically to all of the above* which then just made me irritated about the attempts to make me feel things! So it's possible I'm more irritated at this book than it really deserves, because despite all of the above issues, it's not overall a bad book. I'm guessing some readers find it helpful to have everything explicated in the narrative, and I'm sure many people find it affirming to get to read the story of a man who was raped getting to experience validation of the trauma, and healing, and love. And it can get tiring to constantly read books in settings where people with your identities are oppressed in various ways, so I'm guessing at least some queer people find it relieving to hang out in Tithena for the space of a book. And so on, and so forth. There are reasons the author wrote this book the way they did.
But I was reading this book at the same time as I was doing a reread of Gideon the Ninth, and the vast contrast between approaches was just.....so contrasting. And although on paper a queer secondary world fantasy romance with politics seems more likely to be my thing than a horror novel about necromancers in space, the way the two authors approach the stories mean that the necromancers are where I'm at!
One final complaint: The choice to have one character's chapters be first person and the other be limited third is weird. I've come across it before and I just do not understand it! What is the purpose behind this choice? If anyone can explain it to me, please do, because I want to understand.
Edit: oh and I can’t believe I forgot to mention! It’s supposed to be about politics but it is NOT about politics, the supposed politics are a murder mystery plot that resolves into what’s ultimately just an internal family inheritance dispute!
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Thanks for thinking so hard and sharing those thoughts!
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Elder Race, which I'm reading right now, does that too, and I don't know why. I am hoping that it is not just that the author can really get into the male, science-world character, but can only see the female, magic-world character from the outside.
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It turns out though that it's not just that the book CONTAINS rape etc; it is actually ABOUT rape and the trauma of it and the recovery process, which you would never guess from the marketing copy or from the professional reviews I read, or even the content warning tbh
I think I'm a rare reader who wasn't actually bothered by the rape scene. Those things just don't tend to upset me in written fiction (perhaps because, while I have dealt with the kind of sexual harassment most women deal with, I've never had any experience with that kind of danger?), but I agree with you that the publisher and reviewers should have been much more clear about it. I get why it bothers so many other people.
Give me reasons why Tithena is like this, when none of the countries around it are??
YES THANK YOU.
this makes the cross-cultural communication difficulties within the relationship really dissatisfying, because it's not "these two cultures do things differently and both Velasin and Caethari have to do some learning to understand each other," it's "Velasin has to learn to stop being so Ralian about everything because Ralia sucks."
Yes! You have articulated this! If there were lots of things about Ralia that were good aside from its sexual politics, it would work so much better. But it being inferior in every single way???
It makes the ways that there ARE still unquestioned issues in Tithenai culture far more uncomfortable, because I'm left being like "......does the author not realise the significant issues here?"
YUP.
Our Heroes decide to work entirely extrajudicially to impose a permanent physical punishment on a person they believe deserving of it. And like, yeah, sure, the dude was a whole pile of dicks and did some extremely horrible things, but....WOW. What make you so special, my guys, that you can be judge, jury, and executioner on your own? And later in the book there's like, two sentences worth of them feeling mildly uncomfortable about this, and then it's dismissed forever. Let's not think about it! It's fine!!!!
YEAH.
Relatedly, the characters are extraordinarily self aware of their own emotions and thought processes and these all get explained to the reader at length, both in the narrative and in their conversations. And they're always right in their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings! Plus people are awfully willing to extensively answer questions about all sorts of things in a way that doesn't feel naturalistic.
Exactly. This is the part that felt way, way too influenced by online leftist culture of the Tumblr/Twitter variety and was probably the thing that left me coldest.
The two of them start the book foreign strangers in an arranged marriage that they feel weird about, and within DAYS completely trust and love each other. This is too fast. This is way too fast!
I KNOW. I can't help contrasting this with A Taste of Gold and Iron, which I just read, and which is also a m/m fantasy novel involving royalty. The relationship is actually believable! They move fast, but it's weeks/a couple of months fast and not days fast!
He's just discovered that his beloved younger sister has committed many crimes against him and people he loves, and then that beloved younger sister dies! But we just move RIGHT on past that and finish the book on Velasin's pov, which is all, wow isn't my relationship with Caethari amazing, the end. Again: unsatisfying.
Absolutely! There is so much there you could explore with Caethari dealing with that! But no! We don't get any of it!
Thank you thank you for sharing all of your thoughts! I think the book irritates me less than it irritates you, but it just doesn't work for me for many of the reasons you listed here.
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YEAH. It would not be hard, to make there be things about Ralia that are worthwhile, while still being a place that Velasin can no longer be at home! It would be so much more interesting!!
This is the part that felt way, way too influenced by online leftist culture of the Tumblr/Twitter variety and was probably the thing that left me coldest.
YEAH. You're so right that that's what it was, and it super did not work for me either.
It's really too bad about this book, because I think it really COULD have been good! But instead, reading it has resulted in me removing any other Foz Meadows writings from my to-read list.
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But he left nothing behind that he seemed to care about. No other friends? No favorite local theater troupe? Nothing?
Yeah, I definitely have no desire to read any further books from Meadows either.
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And if the author didn't want to get into it then it COULD have been portrayed as another aspect of his trauma, that he feels the need to have a complete emotional break from his past, because it was a Ralian man from Ralian culture who hurt him, but no. Ralia = the worst. (except when they need to borrow the idea of branding Killic's hand! Punishment of criminals: the only thing Ralia has to offer!!)
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Yes, that would have worked!
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actually now that I think about it, it might be signaling Velasin Is The Real Protagonist In The Author's Heart lol. he's the one who gets the growth arc, and he's the one who gets to experience the joys of discovering Wish-Fulfilment Culture, so even though both V and C get equal screen time, maybe V's the one the reader is expected to see themself in, and that's why the first person?
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I have actually hardly come across any other reviews of this book (
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Unexamined noble privilege (especially in a utopian society where theoretically everybody gets a fair shake!) is something I have less and less time for as I get older, and the thing where the cultural conflict to bridge is you need to accept that the other culture is simply better and more welcoming in every way! just sounds so annoying, even if the worldbuilding actually explained how Tithenia got that way (but extra when it doesn't). I think that would ruin the book for me even without the other stuff! Some of the other stuff sounds irritating or jarring, but that's the part that just sounds so... like... disconnected from everything about how people and societies actually work, and steeped in a certain kind of online approach to polishing away everything [that the writer notices is] problematic instead.
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I really expected more from this book. I don't know why, but I really expected more from it.
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