Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - The Daughters of Izdihar

I try to be generous with books, particular when they're first in a series(in this case, The Alamaxa Duology). Sometimes themes aren't developed until later books, and judging characters before they fully develop feels a bit like bullying a child who's still trying to find their place in the world. But all of that said, there were some things I have serious issues with in this book, things that I doubt are going to get better in the second part. Even though there were other aspects that I really liked, I find it incredibly difficult to look past the things that I thought were horrible.

I'll start with what I liked. The setting was gorgeous, and I loved how familiar locations(the map is basically northern Africa and the Mediterranean rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise) and cultures were re-imagined into this fantasy world. This is the second fantasy version of Egypt I've read about recently(the first being P. Djèlí Clark's A Master of Djinn), and of the two it's my favorite setting. I did have to read with google up on my phone to check terminology frequently, but it wasn't any more bother than flipping back to a glossary, which is a familiar exercise for any fantasy reader. I also loved the examination of how social standing grants privilege, particularly in regard to putting yourself and others at risk in the context of protest and activism.

I liked the magic system — divided by element into Earthweaving, Waterweaving, Airweaving, and Fireweaving — well enough, but as a long-time fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender I couldn't help but notice that Weaving was almost exactly Bending. Seriously. You could do a find-replace, that's how close it is. So no wonder I thought it was cool, because I really like A:TLA's magic system. I did appreciate how in Daughters of Izdihar the type of powers weren't determined by character origin, so you weren't constrained to weaving a certain element just because of who your parents were.

Moving on to what I was less fond of, right off the bat I felt that the writing style was a bit odd. I felt like things were moving along at a fast clip, but like I was being told about them rather than getting a chance to truly appreciate them alongside the characters. I noticed this strongly for the first several chapters, but I can't tell if this dropped off as the story got into full swing or if I just got used to it. I also felt that some of the dialogue was anachronistic. The story had a period fantasy feel to it, not medieval but not modern either, but every so often a character would swear like they were in the 21st century. It knocked me out of my immersion every time that happened.

And now we get to the thing I really didn't like. I love a good shades of gray story, where the morals aren't clear and sometimes the ends have to justify the means, but in order to pull this off the shades of gray have to be explored in the story. In this book, the protagonists would do questionable things in the pursuit of good over and over again, and essentially shrug off any criticism. It seemed as if the audience was meant to nod along with them as the objecting characters were dismissed. Particularly inexcusable was the treatment of Nico. After how Nehal treated him in the first half of the book, particularly her dismissal of his obvious distress, I found it next to impossible to like her as a character. And then he just got over it, like it had never happened, and the story didn't bother to examine this at all or act like it was anything less than entirely appropriate.

I grew up around a particularly toxic type of feminism that, frankly, treated it as amusing when women hurt men, like it was some kind of karmic payback. It took me longer than I care to admit to realize how horrible this was, and to distance myself from it. The feminism elements of this story remind me very strongly of something I would've thought was cool back when I still thought that was positive empowerment for women. As I said at the beginning of this(long, sorry) review, it's entirely possible that the author is aware of all these things and intends to wrap them up in the second book. But all I have in front of me is the first book, and given the lack of any kind of reflection on or complex consideration of these themes(in contrast to the themes of class and privilege, which were handled very well), I'm not holding out much hope that they'll be treated any better in the second half of the story.

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