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maggieslibrarycard's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
2.0
 Scorpica by G. R. McAllister
2 stars
Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Death/Death of a Parent/Death of Children, Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Sexual Content/Sexual Violence towards a Minor
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
While there were some parts of this book that I had a fun time reading, I think all of its elements were unfortunately at best just okay.
The book takes place in five matriarchal queendoms, and follows the lives of a primarily female cast, as well as the reactions of the rulers of these realms, when AFAB children stop being born.
While there was a large cast of characters, including many different POV characters, I really never found myself growing attached to any of them, connecting to them, or even rooting for them to succeed in their chapters. All of the characters felt very flat, and underdeveloped to me, and all of the POVs had the same voice, which resulted in all the different characters feeling inauthentic and indistinct. As well, after finishing the book, it felt to me like a lot of the POV characters did not have satisfying conclusions to their arcs, and that the purpose of their chapters was mostly just to introduce other elements of the book, which in my opinion is indicative of poor narrative planning.
I think a lot of my issues with the characters come down to the author primarily telling the readers things in the prose, and not showing them. While I didnât have any issues with the prose style of the book, we as readers were told a lot of things about the personalities and motivations of various characters in the novel, but it was less common for these characteristics to be displayed through their actions.
The pacing choices for this book were interesting, and the end result of the plot made me feel like this was almost more of a prequel to the series than the first book. (Which is completely okay! Just something to expect before you start reading so you donât feel dissatisfied with the ending.) To that end, while the book was, in my opinion, fairly fast paced, it was very episodic, in that we would follow a particular character for a chapter and then not jump back to them for several years in the worldâs timeline. There were a lot of time skips, and, as I mentioned before, a lot of POV characters introduced who were only included in a few chapters, which contributed to the prequel-esque and episodic feeling I got while reading. Again, not a bad thing! Just something to be aware of before starting to read.
Another big critique of the book was the limited world-building. While there are multiple queendoms, they all seem to operate in essentially the same way and we donât learn a lot about the culture, magic system, and history of the entire realm beyond what is required for the plot, or the distinct natures of each of the queendoms, besides their focus on different industries. This is always one of my favourite aspects of fantasy books, so I was really disappointed that it wasnât included very much here. I was also really hoping the bookâs focus on women would result in it displaying different sorts of matriarchal societies in the different queendoms, which wasnât really the case. As well, I was hoping there would be a more nuanced examination of gender and gender roles in the book. The difference between a personâs sex and gender is never really brought up, and children are determined to be male or female at birth. There is one non-binary character in this book - albeit a priest who exists mainly outside of the queendomsâ society - so I hope that in future books the author will critique the gender binary which seems to dictate a lot of the societyâs operations. However, I should add that I am cisgender, so I would suggest referring to a non-cis reader for a more nuanced examination of these themes within the novel, as I donât want to speak for or over the trans and non-binary community with regards to this topic!
There was a huge focus on sex and sexual content, which is fine, but I did find it strange that in a novel where this was such a key focus that there was only one minor f/f relationship, and other non-heteronormative sexualities were basically ignored.
The following section contains minor spoilers for the book, but I found it very concerning, so I felt the need to include it in my review.Â
During one passage in the book, a character, who is at this point a minor, is mourning the loss of one of her very close friends. To âhelpâ her âcopeâ with this lose, another (adult) character who is in a position of authority over her by demonstrating the use of a sex toy on the minorâs body, which is described in fairly heavy detail and, most concerningly of all, was described in a positive light and the problematic nature of this encounter was never addressed. While I wasnât in love with this book before this scene, it to me was a moderately fun and fast-paced read that I wasnât expecting to think too much about after the ending. However, this section completely soured the reading experience for me and made me very uncomfortable. I was probably going to give this book a solid 2.5-3 stars before reading this scene, but I really couldnât do that in good conscience after this part of the book.
2 stars
Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Death/Death of a Parent/Death of Children, Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Sexual Content/Sexual Violence towards a Minor
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
While there were some parts of this book that I had a fun time reading, I think all of its elements were unfortunately at best just okay.
The book takes place in five matriarchal queendoms, and follows the lives of a primarily female cast, as well as the reactions of the rulers of these realms, when AFAB children stop being born.
While there was a large cast of characters, including many different POV characters, I really never found myself growing attached to any of them, connecting to them, or even rooting for them to succeed in their chapters. All of the characters felt very flat, and underdeveloped to me, and all of the POVs had the same voice, which resulted in all the different characters feeling inauthentic and indistinct. As well, after finishing the book, it felt to me like a lot of the POV characters did not have satisfying conclusions to their arcs, and that the purpose of their chapters was mostly just to introduce other elements of the book, which in my opinion is indicative of poor narrative planning.
I think a lot of my issues with the characters come down to the author primarily telling the readers things in the prose, and not showing them. While I didnât have any issues with the prose style of the book, we as readers were told a lot of things about the personalities and motivations of various characters in the novel, but it was less common for these characteristics to be displayed through their actions.
The pacing choices for this book were interesting, and the end result of the plot made me feel like this was almost more of a prequel to the series than the first book. (Which is completely okay! Just something to expect before you start reading so you donât feel dissatisfied with the ending.) To that end, while the book was, in my opinion, fairly fast paced, it was very episodic, in that we would follow a particular character for a chapter and then not jump back to them for several years in the worldâs timeline. There were a lot of time skips, and, as I mentioned before, a lot of POV characters introduced who were only included in a few chapters, which contributed to the prequel-esque and episodic feeling I got while reading. Again, not a bad thing! Just something to be aware of before starting to read.
Another big critique of the book was the limited world-building. While there are multiple queendoms, they all seem to operate in essentially the same way and we donât learn a lot about the culture, magic system, and history of the entire realm beyond what is required for the plot, or the distinct natures of each of the queendoms, besides their focus on different industries. This is always one of my favourite aspects of fantasy books, so I was really disappointed that it wasnât included very much here. I was also really hoping the bookâs focus on women would result in it displaying different sorts of matriarchal societies in the different queendoms, which wasnât really the case. As well, I was hoping there would be a more nuanced examination of gender and gender roles in the book. The difference between a personâs sex and gender is never really brought up, and children are determined to be male or female at birth. There is one non-binary character in this book - albeit a priest who exists mainly outside of the queendomsâ society - so I hope that in future books the author will critique the gender binary which seems to dictate a lot of the societyâs operations. However, I should add that I am cisgender, so I would suggest referring to a non-cis reader for a more nuanced examination of these themes within the novel, as I donât want to speak for or over the trans and non-binary community with regards to this topic!
There was a huge focus on sex and sexual content, which is fine, but I did find it strange that in a novel where this was such a key focus that there was only one minor f/f relationship, and other non-heteronormative sexualities were basically ignored.
The following section contains minor spoilers for the book, but I found it very concerning, so I felt the need to include it in my review.Â
Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, and War
Moderate: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Pregnancy, and Transphobia
Minor: Alcohol and Alcoholism
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