Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - The Betrayals

TL;DR: The Betrayals is a poorly crafted, offensive Christian persecution fantasy featuring multiple other discriminatory stances that wants to be taken seriously as a literary work, but has nothing to say.

The Betrayals’ merits begin and end with a gorgeous cover. There is somehow both a lot and nothing going on here. Crucial elements are vague for the sake of vagueness, so much of the book both in major and minor elements is offensive, and the craft itself isn’t even particularly well done.

According to the blurb, The Betrayals centres around the grand jeu. The national game (or not a game, or a performance, or a religion, take your pick honestly) of some European nation (that is not France or Britain or Switzerland but deliberately not disclosed for some reason). The grand jeu is clearly made intentionally vague so the reader can never actually get a handle on what it is, how it is played, or what elements really make it up. This vagueness truly serves no purpose in the story or for the themes of the book. The author is also intentionally vague about what country this is taking place in, what time period it takes place in, and the details of the ruling political party. I believe this was an attempt to demonstrate that fascism can happen anywhere at anytime, but ultimately it is not effective and just leaves things feeling confused and hollow.

This book is also wildly offensive with absolutely no hint to what the reader is in for in the back cover description. This book is actually less about the grand jeu and more about the ruling political party’s oppression of Christians. The Christian oppression complex is weird and disgusting in and of itself, but Bridget Collins succeeds in making it worse. Collins has essentially recreated pre-Holocaust/World War II Nazi Germany and substituted Christians for Jewish people in her ahistorical fantasy world. Collins goes out of her way to inform us that the ruling party in the book came to power by gaining the support of the working class through blaming the country’s struggles on communists and Christians. In this reimagining of history Christians are marked with a cross on their clothing, put on a registry which requires special papers, and secretly rounded up by police then left in a hostile area. There was no creativity here, just a disgustingly antisemitic warping of history to satisfy the bizarre Christian desire to be oppressed. As if this wasn’t enough, Christians are lumped in with Muslims and Jewish people, who are actually oppressed (pages 51 and 78). The author also uses the slur g*psy (derogatory term for Romani people) and maligns their beliefs (page 183) for no real reason with nothing else done to combat that behaviour in the text.

The misogyny in this book both of the time period (which isn’t even specified but implied to be historical) and the characters goes completely unchallenged. Women are repeatedly maligned as less than the men, stupider, more frivolous, overly sensitive, petty. The two main female characters (Magister Ludi Claire Dryden, and The Rat) are almost never referred to by their names but rather their titles. Their supposed differences from other women are also repeatedly pointed out. The result is two dehumanized “not like other girls” caricatures who exist solely to further the development of male characters’ stories (Léo and Claire, Simon and The Rat).

The twist of Claire being the Carfax that Léo knew was predictable and boring. It diminished Léo’s previous relationship with Carfax, his current relationship with Claire, and the significance of Carfax’s death. In conjunction with the rest of the book it also came off as both transphobic and homophobic, whether that was the intention or not. Earlier in the book there is a seemingly throwaway line about an irrelevant side character who dresses in typically male clothing. It is said that, “she’d rather be an honorary man than speak up for women” (page 203). This is the exact attitude that TERFs hold towards trans men and trans masculine people. TERFs believe, that just as is portrayed in this book through Claire/Carfax, that trans men are really women pretending to be men due to not wanting to be disadvantaged under patriarchy. This story seems to play into that belief, and taken in conjunction with the Christian persecution fantasy it entertains, I’m not inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt. In addition, the story gains little to nothing by retconning the queer relationship between Carfax and Léo other than getting to bury its gays. While there is less explicitly homophobic in this story, eliminating the only queer relationship retroactively once again does not look good in combination with everything else going on in this book.

The least of Bridget Collins’ sins in The Betrayals is the craft, however it also does not hold up under scrutiny. Bridget Collins clearly intended to write a Very Serious Literary Work with Something To Say. Ultimately what she created is something that can’t be taken seriously and has nothing to say. She is vague just for the sake of vagueness, it doesn’t accomplish anything. The character of The Rat seems to serve little purpose to the story. The character’s main function seems to be an attempt to shock readers through grossness and light body horror to enhance the impression of this as a serious literary work. The Rat’s secondary function is to further the Christian persecution narrative through her interactions with Simon, but that is irrelevant to the main plot of Claire/Léo/Carfax. We are also repeatedly told things instead of shown them. Collins just can’t seem to deal in subtleties that would be so much more compelling in this book. She can’t just show us that Léo is is romantically interested in Carfax (although it is obvious), she has to spend two pages telling us that Léo has a crush on Carfax. We are told, seemingly out of nowhere, that Léo loves Claire separately from his memory of Carfax. What led to that? Why are we suddenly being told this when up to that point Claire has been a sort of stand in or surrogate for Carfax in Léo’s mind? It might be shocking for Bridget Collins to find out that readers can, in fact, figure things out on their own and through subtext, and don’t need to be bashed over the head with them. Perhaps, instead of explicitly stating the obvious, she could spend those pages criticizing the disgusting attitudes displayed in this book.

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glammster's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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mallorypen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I went into this book with my mind full of Bridget Collins’ first book for adults, “The Binding;” that book had a similar, indescribable magic-like act that was well-known but misunderstood or feared. However, this book wasn’t quite what I expected and in some ways, that was disappointing … but it also says a lot about starting a story with expectations, and not meeting it where it is.

I won’t go as far to say that the relationships between these characters is queer-baiting, but there are definite shades of it.

When Leo started to have feelings for Carfax, I thought that his queerness may play into his desire to succeed and be the best, but he’s unable to do so because he wears a mask of what he thinks is right versus being authentic. I really liked that reading, and felt that Leo’s growing feelings for Claire was the true betrayal; not only did it feel disingenuous to his relationship to Carfax and Leo’s queer identity, but it felt wildly unfair to Claire to be a stand-in for her brother.

The tone of the book overall was wholly melancholy; successes, love, relationships, and triumphs were all tinged with this overarching sadness. The government cracking down and distorting all the good and beautiful in the world and the game of grand jeu felt inevitable; the lies and self-loathing of the main characters felt insurmountable; and no matter how they wanted something else, the rift between Leo and Carfax and Claire was so intense.

I didn’t guess the twist before it happened.

There were hints to it, enough that I thought perhaps Carfax disguised himself as a woman to come back to Montverre, but the opposite never occurred to me because, again, I was so bought in to the queer subplot.

It was an interesting feeling as a reader to feel betrayed by the story and in that way, I felt how masterful Collins is with her storytelling.

There was enough here that I can’t deny the book was GOOD, but I rated it three stars because I didn’t feel good or satisfied after finishing it. Not all books need to make me feel those things to be enjoyable reads, and I appreciate the novel for everything it did. I might enjoy it more on a re-read in the future.

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theirgracegrace's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

What I liked about the book: the richness of the language and the complicated system of roles and reversals that kept me reading. What I disliked: literally everything else. The attempt at Holocaust imagery is absurd, the love story completely overshadows the setting and the threats, and the characters are completely forgettable and ordinary. The author is also a TERF and you can see it in the way that the final reveal is played out. Honestly want my money back.

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ladymickbeth's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

The premise of this sounded like I book I would find ideal, but while I was intrigued, I was constantly frustrated, sometimes to the point of anger, at this book. The big plot reveal at the 80% mark made me literally get up from my chair and yell, it was so oddly placed and confusing. This book goes between a “present time” 1930s in an unnamed European country (meant to be France? Somewhere French-speaking? Somewhere where French culture was just copied and borrowed from?) and flashbacks to when the main character was attending the school, told with diary entries. I most looked forward to the diary entries, but I had to keep reminding myself that the narrator was 19-20 at the time of writing and not somewhere between 14 and 17, which is how I personally think the students seemed to act. The side plot with the Rat seemed like such a random addition that it almost felt out of place for most of the story. Also, maybe it’s because I hadn’t read the book this one is based on, but it was so frustrating to me how the Grand Jeu is never properly explained. I didn’t know it had something to do with music until like 20% in, but there’s also some kind of dance involved? Also math?? They say it’s meant to be worship, but they’re never clear on WHAT they are worshipping with the game. I’m good with a sense of mystery, but the whole time I had no grasp on this main piece of the plot.

My main issue, though, is the allusion to Holocaust-style religious prejudice, complete with having to have a symbol on your clothes to indicate you belong to a certain “other” religion — for the most part, this was Christianity. That subplot and its necessity makes NO sense to me and was uncomfortable, especially with it being set just a decade before WWII began (even though there is no confirmation that this story takes place in a universe where that war happens). I was here for the slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance, and the rest of the time I was left reeling about the plot points and character decisions.

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5aru's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I have hardly ever felt this conflicted about a book. I loved it, sometimes; I hated it, sometimes — and so I’ve averaged it out to three, because I truly don’t know what to think.

I remember loving The Binding. Sure, it was very slow-paced at times, and I found it hard to keep going; but the characters had me invested, I cared about the story and where it would go, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Betrayals has been a mixed bag. I certainly wasn’t expecting the twist; I wasn’t expecting it, and I didn’t love it.

The fact that Claire and Aimé were separate characters for so much of the book meant that I learned to dislike Claire for her shortcomings (though not as much as I disliked adult Léo, to be fair) and to love Aimé, or at least who I thought Aimé was, from Léo’s descriptions. I also couldn’t help but feel a little cheated, since the homosexual romance turned out to be no such thing at all. I keep thinking of that meme, name something that’s gay and homophobic at the same time…

Beyond that, the fact that Christians are the oppressed collective in an intensely vague worldbuilding that shared objectionable resemblances to deeply traumatizing historical events that affected other religious communities was also very iffy to me; perhaps if we ever learned what the Party was actually doing, or what Purity Laws truly stand for — but like I said, the worldbuilding is intensely vague. Perhaps focusing on Montverre and its inner, closed-off world — since that’s clearly what Collins wanted to write about, anyway — would’ve been more successful.

The whole time I felt like the book was building up to something, only to never really take me anywhere. I guess it betrayed me, too.

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