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A review by zestylobster
Outlawed by Anna North
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
0.25
I could not name one single good thing about this book!!! time to bigbig rant. tl;dr - read this book only if you want to see a white cis woman with no personality undergo 0 character development, while queer and poc characters suffer at her expense.
1. outlawed wanted to be the handmaid's tale sooo bad but it lacked all of the elements that made the handmaid's tale good. zero worldbuilding - ok it ain't good to be a barren woman in this world, but we get sooo little background and context or any idea of what the world is like, it's just so basic. what are the broader implications of barrenness for the world??? tell me more about patriarchy and gender essentialism etc in this world! the whole contrivance is so simplistic that i feel a 12 year old could write this, and im not even being hyperbolic. Anna North - your worldbuilding and prose are at the level of a child.
2. also like we hear so much about barren women, but there's never any moment where it's pondered whether maybe their husbands were barren?? like,, Children of Men whomst ???!!! ada accepts her fate as a barren woman but like it's so equally likely she was fertile the whole time, like,, maybe she wAS barren but the possibility of the alternative is NEVER explored, never even raised or mentioned in a single sentence. seems such a big oversight and again shows the lack of worldbuilding.
3. ada the mc is the most boring character i've read in my life!! she has no personality, she has no quirks, no charms. she's bad at everything she tries, her dialogue is not interesting, and her being a doctor makes no sense when she only has experience assisting her midwife mum. her motivations make no sense, nothing about her makes sense!!! Her whole aim is to find out why she's infertile, and by the end she hasn't made ANY steps towards achieving that, so what was the whole point of the book!!!! she doesn't actually care why people as a whole are infertile, or want to change society at all - she just wants to find out why /she/ personally is infertile. On top of that, queer and poc characters are used to advance the plot of this cishet white woman, they are props for her to have character development (minimal tho her development is). queerness is never ever ever explicitly addressed, race addressed only for like 2 sentences and in a VERY simplistic fashion. absolutely vomit inducing.
4. nobody in the hole-in-the-wall gang has any personality !!! someone else's review mentioned that we get descriptions of each of the characters, when ada first sees them, then it's not until ages later that we find out their names, and it's soo impossible to match up the descriptions to each character, just sloppy writing. on top of that, each of news, texas, agnes rose, elzy, lo all are the exact same person, you could tell me any one of them was saying any line of dialogue and it wouldn't matter. cassie had a tiny bit more personality?? but even then, when we finally get her backstory it's just the same as everybody else's. don't even get me started on when Lo left the gang and then nobody was even sad lol just like "oh ok", no dealing with that loss. and i thought for sure it was being set up for lo to just come back and help them in their showdown w the sheriffs at the end, but no, she is just never seen again lmaooo, so pointless!!
5.1 ok time to talk about the absolute worst and most disgusting part of the book for me - how it deals with gender and sexuality. when ada arrives at the gang headquarters she sees to girlies kissing, and im like ok cool some queer rep! then it is never addressed, i don't even super know which two gang members it was because again, they're all the same, and nothing gay ever happens again in the book. We eventually meet Lark, who is a queer man, who has been castrated for that queerness. COOL, an opportunity to explore the world? absolutely not. a couple of paras are spent discussing how disgusting his genitals look now and how repulsed ada is. this feels sooo voyeuristic and uncomfortable, like are we meant to be relating to ada's curiosity ??? sorry but i thought we got over this fascination with uncommon genitals when game of thrones ended !!! when lark gets injured and brought back to the gang's hideout, the gang doesn't want him there because they've never had a man there before or something. OK EXCUSE ME WHAT. the whole point of the hole in the wall gang is set up as being a safe haven for those who suffer or are ostracised by wider society... so barren women and queers should be the main people seeking refuge there?? NO!!! Girlz only, no boys allowed, apparently !!!! the gender essentialist views in this book are off the charts. sorry i didn't realise that the gang are all TERFs !!!!! incredibly surprising as... the Kid is MAYBE non-binary ????!!!!
5.2 The kid - i want to scream, cry and throw up at how bad this representation was. The Kid is the leader of the gang and no pronouns are ever used for the Kid. it is never said that the Kid is nonbinary or queer, or genderfluid, or has no gender. they/them pronouns or other pronouns are never used. it's stupid. if you want to include a nonbinary character then commit and actually have a discussion of gender and transness in your book, not just chuck the character in and do everything you can to avoid this discussion. the absolute most foul part is when we get the Kid's backstory and find out the Kid's AGAB!! turns out the Kid was assigned female at birth!!! it's suuuper important that we know this, because it shows only WOMEN truly suffer in this world (shhh forget about lark). and that the gang of outlaws will ONLY accept you if you have the right genitals. there is NNOOO way on earth the gang would allow an amab nonbinary person to join the gang lmaooo. like the one thing this book had going for it, despite the refusal to discuss nonbinary identity or neopronouns, was not indicating the kid's agab for likeeee the first 80% of the book. then BAM, you get the kid's backstory and find out the kid was once pregnant blah blah blah, ok WHY DID WE NEED TO KNOW THAT!! we didn't need to know it at all, it added absolutely nothing to the story, just the author being absolutely unable to misgender the character, wanting us to know "btw dw the kid is actuALLy a girlyyy xoxoxo" i've never been sooo disgusted at queer rep before. TERF outlaw gang wooO!!! ALSO i love that the Kid goes 'crazy' in the book, suffering from some unnamed mental health condition that leaves the Kid irrational and not in the right mind. yAaaaas trans people are so mentally unwell!!! go off queen!!! Anna North - you failed on every level to have genuine queer representation in your book. your book is disgusting. there could have been opportunity to talk about the kid's gender, sooo easily. instead the whole B plot is just about the kid's insomnia and mental illness. it made NO sense !!! that doesn't even get any kind of resolution at the end either.
6. the plot to rob the bank makes no sense, we never find out the consequences on the town they robbed from. nobody's motivation to participate in the plot makes sense. the whole plan felt soo simplistic that, again, i felt a 12 year old wrote this. Genuinely. there was no nuance, no surprises, no suspense, no plot twists!! there was that one bit when ada was in the bank and she was worried lark wasn't going to enter the bank and every few lines it kept saying "A man who wasn't lark entered the bank", "another man who wasn't lark entered the bank". and i was like oh ho ho??! okay wow what's happened, something actually gone wrong w the plan??? to then turn the page and it says "lark entered the bank" WHAT !!! LMAOOO what was all that build up for ?!?!!! plotting and pacing of a child author, honestly.
7. there was NOTHING western about this book ?!!! i have no clue why this is marketed as a feminist western. hmm, they ride horses?? they in desert? they have guns? there's a sheriff ?? ok things that are commonly found in westerns are present yes! but i learnt nothing about cowboy life, town life, dynamics between people. again, lack of worldbuilding makes me say umm how is this a western. a failure.
i HATED this book. sometimes bad books are fun because they are so silly, but this one didn't even have that as a good feature. it was slow and boring. could not recommend this book LESS.
1. outlawed wanted to be the handmaid's tale sooo bad but it lacked all of the elements that made the handmaid's tale good. zero worldbuilding - ok it ain't good to be a barren woman in this world, but we get sooo little background and context or any idea of what the world is like, it's just so basic. what are the broader implications of barrenness for the world??? tell me more about patriarchy and gender essentialism etc in this world! the whole contrivance is so simplistic that i feel a 12 year old could write this, and im not even being hyperbolic. Anna North - your worldbuilding and prose are at the level of a child.
2. also like we hear so much about barren women, but there's never any moment where it's pondered whether maybe their husbands were barren?? like,, Children of Men whomst ???!!! ada accepts her fate as a barren woman but like it's so equally likely she was fertile the whole time, like,, maybe she wAS barren but the possibility of the alternative is NEVER explored, never even raised or mentioned in a single sentence. seems such a big oversight and again shows the lack of worldbuilding.
3. ada the mc is the most boring character i've read in my life!! she has no personality, she has no quirks, no charms. she's bad at everything she tries, her dialogue is not interesting, and her being a doctor makes no sense when she only has experience assisting her midwife mum. her motivations make no sense, nothing about her makes sense!!! Her whole aim is to find out why she's infertile, and by the end she hasn't made ANY steps towards achieving that, so what was the whole point of the book!!!! she doesn't actually care why people as a whole are infertile, or want to change society at all - she just wants to find out why /she/ personally is infertile. On top of that, queer and poc characters are used to advance the plot of this cishet white woman, they are props for her to have character development (minimal tho her development is). queerness is never ever ever explicitly addressed, race addressed only for like 2 sentences and in a VERY simplistic fashion. absolutely vomit inducing.
4. nobody in the hole-in-the-wall gang has any personality !!! someone else's review mentioned that we get descriptions of each of the characters, when ada first sees them, then it's not until ages later that we find out their names, and it's soo impossible to match up the descriptions to each character, just sloppy writing. on top of that, each of news, texas, agnes rose, elzy, lo all are the exact same person, you could tell me any one of them was saying any line of dialogue and it wouldn't matter. cassie had a tiny bit more personality?? but even then, when we finally get her backstory it's just the same as everybody else's. don't even get me started on when Lo left the gang and then nobody was even sad lol just like "oh ok", no dealing with that loss. and i thought for sure it was being set up for lo to just come back and help them in their showdown w the sheriffs at the end, but no, she is just never seen again lmaooo, so pointless!!
5.1 ok time to talk about the absolute worst and most disgusting part of the book for me - how it deals with gender and sexuality. when ada arrives at the gang headquarters she sees to girlies kissing, and im like ok cool some queer rep! then it is never addressed, i don't even super know which two gang members it was because again, they're all the same, and nothing gay ever happens again in the book. We eventually meet Lark, who is a queer man, who has been castrated for that queerness. COOL, an opportunity to explore the world? absolutely not. a couple of paras are spent discussing how disgusting his genitals look now and how repulsed ada is. this feels sooo voyeuristic and uncomfortable, like are we meant to be relating to ada's curiosity ??? sorry but i thought we got over this fascination with uncommon genitals when game of thrones ended !!! when lark gets injured and brought back to the gang's hideout, the gang doesn't want him there because they've never had a man there before or something. OK EXCUSE ME WHAT. the whole point of the hole in the wall gang is set up as being a safe haven for those who suffer or are ostracised by wider society... so barren women and queers should be the main people seeking refuge there?? NO!!! Girlz only, no boys allowed, apparently !!!! the gender essentialist views in this book are off the charts. sorry i didn't realise that the gang are all TERFs !!!!! incredibly surprising as... the Kid is MAYBE non-binary ????!!!!
5.2 The kid - i want to scream, cry and throw up at how bad this representation was. The Kid is the leader of the gang and no pronouns are ever used for the Kid. it is never said that the Kid is nonbinary or queer, or genderfluid, or has no gender. they/them pronouns or other pronouns are never used. it's stupid. if you want to include a nonbinary character then commit and actually have a discussion of gender and transness in your book, not just chuck the character in and do everything you can to avoid this discussion. the absolute most foul part is when we get the Kid's backstory and find out the Kid's AGAB!! turns out the Kid was assigned female at birth!!! it's suuuper important that we know this, because it shows only WOMEN truly suffer in this world (shhh forget about lark). and that the gang of outlaws will ONLY accept you if you have the right genitals. there is NNOOO way on earth the gang would allow an amab nonbinary person to join the gang lmaooo. like the one thing this book had going for it, despite the refusal to discuss nonbinary identity or neopronouns, was not indicating the kid's agab for likeeee the first 80% of the book. then BAM, you get the kid's backstory and find out the kid was once pregnant blah blah blah, ok WHY DID WE NEED TO KNOW THAT!! we didn't need to know it at all, it added absolutely nothing to the story, just the author being absolutely unable to misgender the character, wanting us to know "btw dw the kid is actuALLy a girlyyy xoxoxo" i've never been sooo disgusted at queer rep before. TERF outlaw gang wooO!!! ALSO i love that the Kid goes 'crazy' in the book, suffering from some unnamed mental health condition that leaves the Kid irrational and not in the right mind. yAaaaas trans people are so mentally unwell!!! go off queen!!! Anna North - you failed on every level to have genuine queer representation in your book. your book is disgusting. there could have been opportunity to talk about the kid's gender, sooo easily. instead the whole B plot is just about the kid's insomnia and mental illness. it made NO sense !!! that doesn't even get any kind of resolution at the end either.
6. the plot to rob the bank makes no sense, we never find out the consequences on the town they robbed from. nobody's motivation to participate in the plot makes sense. the whole plan felt soo simplistic that, again, i felt a 12 year old wrote this. Genuinely. there was no nuance, no surprises, no suspense, no plot twists!! there was that one bit when ada was in the bank and she was worried lark wasn't going to enter the bank and every few lines it kept saying "A man who wasn't lark entered the bank", "another man who wasn't lark entered the bank". and i was like oh ho ho??! okay wow what's happened, something actually gone wrong w the plan??? to then turn the page and it says "lark entered the bank" WHAT !!! LMAOOO what was all that build up for ?!?!!! plotting and pacing of a child author, honestly.
7. there was NOTHING western about this book ?!!! i have no clue why this is marketed as a feminist western. hmm, they ride horses?? they in desert? they have guns? there's a sheriff ?? ok things that are commonly found in westerns are present yes! but i learnt nothing about cowboy life, town life, dynamics between people. again, lack of worldbuilding makes me say umm how is this a western. a failure.
i HATED this book. sometimes bad books are fun because they are so silly, but this one didn't even have that as a good feature. it was slow and boring. could not recommend this book LESS.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infertility
Minor: Ableism, Body shaming, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Medical trauma, and Colonisation