Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

3 reviews

callmekt's review

adventurous dark slow-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Miscarriage and Pregnancy

Minor: Infertility, Infidelity, Sexual content, Blood, and Vomit

aerialcataloger's review

adventurous mysterious tense

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Miscarriage, Blood, and Medical content

Minor: Sexual content

opinionsofawolf's review

challenging slow-paced

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

3.0

A scifi version of The Little Mermaid that wonders what happens after Ariel leaves the ocean?

In this version, Ariel is Atuale. Eric is Saareval. The sea witch is Yanja. The land folk find themselves the victim of a deadly disease that Atuale is immune to thanks to Yanja's genetic engineering that let her switch from sea dwelling to land dwelling. She seeks out Yanja who takes her on an interplanetary trip to find help from other humanoids with more advanced technology than their own.

The queer representation in this book (it's really more of a novella with no chapters) is that Yanja was in a female body when Atuale lived in the ocean, and they were lovers. When Atuale seeks Yanja out again, Yanja is now in a male body. Saareval is male. So Atuale is bisexual and Yanja is trans. I appreciated how rapidly Atuale accepted Yanja's new gender. There were no deadnaming issues as Yanja kept the same name throughout.

I was disappointed in the representation of Atuale, though, mainly because I think a plot point was just very stereotypical. It's a spoiler so, click to read.

Atuale cheats on Saareval with Yanja while on the trip. We're made to see that Saareval just accepts this as it lets Atuale have children, when they couldn't succeed in having children together because of the genetic manipulation I would be fine with this if it was something they discussed and agreed to in advance, but it's clearly cheating, and given the biphobic idea of bisexual people as cheaters, I am particularly sensitive to this plot point.

Personally, I struggled a bit to want to read this because I wasn't expecting the future pandemic plot and that was just a bit too real for me right now.

I also want to offer the trigger warning that there is miscarriage in a flashback.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Miscarriage, and Blood

This depicts a pandemic.