Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The Daughters of Izdihar

Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai

26 reviews

dejahentendu's review

adventurous emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes

4.0

Pretty solid. Set in a fantasy Egypt (?), Elsbai details the lives of several women struggling for legal equality in a deeply misogynistic society. Each has their own reasons and their own methods, and watching them claim their power was beautiful. The magic isn't terribly innovative, but does it have to be? The point was revolution and growth!

LGBTQIA positive but with homophobia as well

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nikkihill22's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

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

3.5

I liked this story, but found myself frustrated with most of the characters, particularly Nehal who has never once thought about restraint or prudence. The world was engaging, and I’ll probably read the next book too. I also find there wasn’t really much progress made, it feels like the characters mostly ended the story the way they started it, as far as their thoughts and perspectives go.

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veggiestrawenjoyer13's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.75

This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but I think I was pleasantly surprised. It was a lot more politically focused than I anticipated and was something hard to get through. However, I really enjoyed the pace and structure of the plot. Worldbuilding in any fantasy book can be a mouthful, but once you get past it, there is a lot of potential here. By halfway through, I was super invested and hooked. I don’t feel extremely attached to the characters, but I do like them a lot and I can’t wait to see where they end up in the second book.

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bobbyeight's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

1.0

March 15th, 2024

In light of recent events, I feel the need to specify that this is not going to be a glowing review, but it is an honest one. The star rating reflects my thoughts on the books but I'm providing a little bit (lol, feel the wall of text coming) of context to this rating, since it is quite harsh and I do not wish for people to think it is a fake review. Keep in mind that this is my personal perspective, and you are free to agree or disagree.

Here are my main points of criticism, each of which I am going to detail afterwards:

The promise of the book does not deliver.
The characters are unlikeable and extremely unidimensional.
The writing is so grating, repetitive and overly descriptive. It has no finesse and frankly needed a lot more editing.
It's supposed to be an adult novel, but it reads like a middle grade novel and frankly I've read better middle grades than this....
The themes were promising, except they were treated in a way that left no room for nuance.

What I was expecting from the blurb and the online presence of this book: suffragettes, a complex political intrigue (maybe going into details on how the patriarchal society stands its ground through dismissal, violence, etc?), LGBTQ+ inclusion, elemental magic/an interesting magic system, and as advertised by the author herself, Egyptian vibes!

Coming off the high of having just read the Daevabad trilogy, I was looking for similar vibes and oh boy, was I disappointed. The Egyptian vibes are just "this is set in a fake country copy pasted on Egyptian land but is lacking in cultural depth". The elemental magic system was underdeveloped and its role in the story felt extremely superfluous, so much that it would have greatly benefited to be scrapped for a more meaningful approach to the "plot" events. It wasn't weaved in (see what I did there) as intrinsically as it could've been to make it a pillar for the plot and the characters. The LGBTQ+ inclusion was emphasised by the author herself on social media, and I'm sorry to say that apart from a rushed sapphic romance and one other character who is queer, there is nothing LGBTQ+ in this novel; additionally, there is a specific scene in which the main character calls her husband a “coward” for not stepping up to defend their queer friend, reading that (and how the narrative justified her calling him a coward) made my heart break for all the closeted people or people who can't come out for safety reasons. About the complex political intrigue.. well there's a parliament and women can't vote. Does it get more into political stuff? Nope, other than the fact that the characters in this book cycle between "screaming 'vote for women'" > "organising a riot" > "getting thrown into prison" over and over again.

Now about the characters. Not only does the poor writing give nothing for the reader to like the characters at all, they are so extremely unidimensional it is simply impossible to find any depth in them. They are either really bland and boring or really irritating.

The main character, Nehal, is selfish to a degree that's actually baffling, but the narrative doesn't take this stance until the very last chapter of hers. She never once listens to what the other people around her have to say, and yet spends her time crying that nobody listens to her. She doesn't respect other people and honestly, there were a whole bunch of times during which she was extremely disrespectful to Nico over nothing except the fact that she didn't want to be married to him (which was reciprocal, yet he didn’t treat her with any disdain). Her complete lack of empathy did not help either. As for Nico, he was maybe the only male character that wasn't evil. Except he was completely boring, without any personality. Giorgina was interesting at first but it quickly spinned into circles of her doing the exact same thing. For the whole book she had no grasp on her powers, and yet suddenly she did when the plot required it? That felt like it missed quite a few steps in character development..

About the writing, it's always sad when a book has so many structural issues that it pulls you completely out of the story. I don't expect much when I read but a few things I think are essential to any storyteller and lover of words: show don't tell, synonym.com and the use of personal pronouns. The writing lacked the polish expected in a published work.

Show don't tell: as mentioned earlier, this book felt overly descriptive a lot of the time. Everything was visually described, even minor characters appearing only for one scene, which burdens the text with superfluous decor. On the other hand, it would have been interesting if a little bit of craft went into the writing to give more dimension to the feelings of the characters, explore contradictions, dreams and aspirations, internal conflicts and regrets, hopes.. that was mostly said quite textually to us. Words with no room for breathing or interpreting or questioning.

Synonym.com: a lot of the text felt redundant because it was saying the same thing over and over again. For example, every single time Nico was described physically, he was "stout". No synonyms, no nothing, just stout and it was used every single time (I didn't keep track of the page numbers for this).

Other examples about the repetitive use of words, sometimes even in the same sentence when in my opinion, a little bit of editing would have greatly improved the flow of the text.

P.238 → "Her eyes were bloodshot, the bags under her eyes prominent."
P.251 → "Near the bed, a broad-shouldered older woman was hovering, a satchel in her hands. She had wide shoulders and a square jaw."
P.322-324 → In the span of two pages, the same character was described 3 times, every single time the only thing that was said was that he was "fidgeting".
P.330 → "She struggled to her feet and ran to the ambassador, struggling to stay upright."

Other than that, a character can only snap and sneer and snarl so many times before it becomes utterly boring and caricatural..

Personal pronouns: regarding the use of personal pronouns, you will find a great many chunks of text in which the names are repeated over and over when replacing them by "he/she/they/his/her/their" once in a while would greatly improve the flow of the sentences.

Also, on the topics of names and the lack of editing: halfway through the books, the characters go to a place named “Zubaida’s” because of someone specific living there. In the last chapter, when they mention going to that same place again (and there is no mistaking it is the same place), the name is suddenly changed to “Zanuba’s” for no reason. This isn’t even a typo and in both parts of the book, the names are used repeatedly.

I really tried to like this book, but the structural issues were just too much. There is a direction but there is no plot. There are characters but no character arcs or evolution. The themes are treated with such a lack of any nuance it deprives them of their inherent complexity, giving space to a story in which everything is black and white, when it could've been so much more interesting to bring in a little bit of variety (specifically when the reality of these themes cannot be washed of this variety).

Also, both POV characters end up using their powers with extreme malicious intent?

P.336 "His limbs were at her mercy; all of him was at her mercy, and Nehal relished it."
P.340 "Perhaps she hadn't meant to kill the ambassador, or to cause the destruction of the courthouse, but she had certainly intended to cause harm, to hurt, to inspire fear in Naji. She had been reckless and malicious and now a man was dead at her hands, and so many people were injured." (Also for Giorgina it really came out of nowhere, just like her powers, when the plot needed it. It could've been a festering thing during the whole book, instead she was bland for 90% of it and then suddenly overly powerful with no training).

In conclusion, this book fell short of expectations on multiple fronts. While it may appeal to some, especially those not seeking depth or complexity, I cannot recommend it and most likely won’t be reading book 2. There are better-written books by POC authors dealing with similar themes.

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fairyollie's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

I cannot believe this is a debut novel! it is a stunning, emotional, empowering, hopeful, absolutely masterful work about equity and equality and how the oppression of one is the oppression of all. I am so relieved that the sequel comes out soon because I need more Alamaxa in my life pronto

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bookishmillennial's review

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adventurous emotional reflective sad

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

The fantasy worldbuilding totally reminded me of Avatar: The Last Airbender (only because of recency bias, I just watched the new Netflix TV show lol), but I recognize that not every world built upon elements like earth, air, fire and water are only derivative of ATLA. ATLA does not own the copyright and was not the first to do that, I know that! I'm just saying the "weaving" reminded me of it, that's all!

Anyway, I do think the messaging of this women's suffrage movement was extremely heavy handed. Most of the examples of the sexism were overtly sexist and loudly misogynistic. Not too many subdued or covert behaviors displayed, which are sometimes helpful to illustrate too, to show how the patriarchy operates in such insidious ways! However, I didn't find the on-the-nose telling to be exhausting or unnecessary. We need things spelled out sometimes, and that's okay!

This book sets up Nehal and Giorgina's stories (they act a bit like foils against each other) perfectly for the next book in the duology, which I am excited to read! I have the arc so I can't wait to see how this all wraps up!

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rosyapple's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

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

4.0

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saphfics's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced

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

3.25

Prepare to be frustrated a lot by all the characters, and especially the men of the cast.

I think the author did a decent job with writing a very patriarchal society and the different effects it can have on very differen women. As well as how the (lack of) privileges different characters have will change how they approach the issue of women's right. The worlbuilding of the cityitself was quite vivid but when it comes to the religion I was left with many questions

At times it felt very on the nose with the way it handled its themes and there was a lot of repetition. Mostly to contrast the two main characters which again felt very on the nose. The story does delve I to why the two are so different and I do appreciate that.

I do feel like the two mains were very distinctive and had their own distinctive voices. However there was an imbalance to how much screen time I felt each of them were getting. Especially in the beginning. Which kind of makes me sad because I feel like we lost some characterization for both that character and the daughters of izdihar as a whole.

All around a pretty engaging read, mostly towards the end. I will read the next book to see how it ends

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silentquercus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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mamaowlbear's review

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adventurous emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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