A review by lindentea
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

I really really really REALLY loved this… until i didn’t, but i can overlook the stuff that didn’t work for me. Most of all i love — it makes me cry i love it so much — that we now get books from queer muslims about queer muslims and that my queer muslim self can cry over them because oh my god, someone HAS been thinking about all these things too, someone else GETS IT, this thing i always thought was incongruous and impossible to share. i adored cyrus as a character, because even though our lives don’t actually overlap much at all, reading about and from him felt kind of like getting out of the shower and looking in the mirror and seeing yourself (myself) without all the other stuff we put on around people (not just clothes i mean but how when we know we’re being perceived we act different) and then seeing the mirror-self get kinda freaked out by that. i felt that from page one and it was wonderful. which is why i think i didn’t really enjoy the big revelation all that much! I think

Orkideh being Cyrus’ mom (!!!)

actually felt a little bit cheap, because it’s obviously something that shakes Cyrus to the CORE (of course!) but then what we get feels like the author explaining how that’s possible, and we sit with Cyrus for a moment after, and the book ends. Like, here’s this guy who had one of the core pillars of his life just ripped out from under him, and it doesn’t feel like we explored it at all!!

Orkideh gets to talk about the feeling of dying twice, but I don’t think I really saw Cyrus’ thoughts about mourning twice, mourning over and over again, and only finding out what he really lost until she died for realsies. THAT I think would have been a beautiful turning point to further explore ?

But then again, a book where your biggest complaint is “i wish it didn’t end where it did but go on and on and on and on” is a special and beautiful thing. so even if the ending fell a bit flat i can safely say i adored this book. kaveh akbar i will be keeping up