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A review by titanic
A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani
3.0
Oh boy, was this book problematic! Enjoy my long rant despite me actually enjoying the book.
I mentioned in my review for the first book in the series, how The School for Good and Evil came off as misogynistic, and unfortunately that carried over into the second, and I will not be surprised if it features, heavily, in the third. You see, the author has it in his head that Girls™ are Weak and Fragile and Only Care About Appearances whereas Boys™ are filled up of Gore and Fighting and Rowdiness. Yet, if these characters are to be fully fleshed out, they would and could be all of these things, but to fit into these worlds you have to be Masculine™ and Feminine™ and it's disappointing.
You could argue that that's the point of these stories. But Teleri, these are fairytales and that's why they are so stuck by gender norms and social constructs from when they were originally written, and I could very well see your point. But these are targeted at a younger audience (it's tagged as a middle grade read: eight to twelve-year-olds, or in other termsvery impressionable minds.)and writing so much toxicity into the book without even addressing it is very harmful. And so what if he made the characters real. Not every girl is worried about eating cake because of their waist size. Not every boy is chiseled at the age of twelve. It's toxic to write about because the more it gets normalized the more young readers think it's the norm, and strive to reach these impossible odds.
But, let's not get ahead of myself because that is not the only flaw this book has. I almost filed a sticky note with my thoughts on the problematic moments in this book. First, the quickest to mention. It used a slur. I don't think everyone knows it's a slur so I could give this a pass, but I don't feel like it.
Now on for a big problem this book had. It painted slaves in a good light. The whole premise of this book is whether team girls or boys will win and if boys win, Tedros (the love interest) will kill Sophie and Agatha, but if the girls win, the boys will surrender themselves to being slaves for the girls. Yep, you heard it here (not first bc hopefully someone else pointed this out in one of the 2592 reviews)folks. 2014 and he wrote a whole ass 400+ page book with girls talking about their excitement of owning human beings. Someone come cancel this man already, I'm done.
Oh wait, I'm not. I still have more left on my note. That's right, more negatives and I gave this book three stars? What the hell is wrong with me! So as mentioned, the school is divided into girls and boys. Now, one of the teachers is a gnome. Cute. This gnome is a male in the first book but when it comes to the second, they're a girl, but still look a lot like the male gnome who taught the class. Maybe it's a twin. Maybe they're genderfluid. Maybe it's none of your business. Now, what you don't do, is write about sexual abuse like it's no big thing. You see, a character just happens to have "checked" that this gnome is female. I'm assuming the teacher wasn't flaunting their genitals towards an underage student, if so that's another red flag for this book. So, my only conclusion is the character abused the gnome and checked their genitals without consent. Why am I angry about this? It's just a book you say! Once again, it leads back to impressionable minds. If it's okay for a girl to check without permission, maybe it's okay for someone else. Maybe I'm ranting and being over the top, but the blatant disgust this book makes me feel at times, my god.
Now, coming full circle, we're back at the misogyny. Wow, what a fun ride! Near the end of the book, Tedros is bonding with Filip and all that great stuff, but unfortunately, more negative remarks are thrown about. Tedros says Filip is "worse than a girl" because he is showing his emotions by crying. This also ties into my last point by the amount of toxic masculinity this book holds. I don't know why the author things boys shouldn't cry or care for other boys, but he came off as a firm believer in men hiding their feelings and it saddened me. Why shouldn't men and boys cry? It's a toxic idea that they're not allowed to show their emotions.
And there we go, all my negative impressions of the book. Laid out before you for you all to judge. Now, you're probably wondering why I gave this book a three-star rating if I clearly hated it so much. Well, I didn't hate the book. I just had to pretend I didn't see all the mess listed above and it was actually quite enjoyable. The second was definitely better than the first, especially watching Sophie and Agatha's friendship blossom, as that wasn't really a thing in the first book.
I felt warm inside reading this one, and it did leave me confused on what to rate it as I did, deep down, enjoy it. It was a fun read and I think I'm a fan of the series, but the number of problems that accused in under 500 pages was deeply concerning. I hope the author got better when it came to writing for the third book, but I know the chances are highly unlikely. Shame really, this could have been so much more enjoyable if all that mess had been avoided.
I mentioned in my review for the first book in the series, how The School for Good and Evil came off as misogynistic, and unfortunately that carried over into the second, and I will not be surprised if it features, heavily, in the third. You see, the author has it in his head that Girls™ are Weak and Fragile and Only Care About Appearances whereas Boys™ are filled up of Gore and Fighting and Rowdiness. Yet, if these characters are to be fully fleshed out, they would and could be all of these things, but to fit into these worlds you have to be Masculine™ and Feminine™ and it's disappointing.
You could argue that that's the point of these stories. But Teleri, these are fairytales and that's why they are so stuck by gender norms and social constructs from when they were originally written, and I could very well see your point. But these are targeted at a younger audience (it's tagged as a middle grade read: eight to twelve-year-olds, or in other termsvery impressionable minds.)and writing so much toxicity into the book without even addressing it is very harmful. And so what if he made the characters real. Not every girl is worried about eating cake because of their waist size. Not every boy is chiseled at the age of twelve. It's toxic to write about because the more it gets normalized the more young readers think it's the norm, and strive to reach these impossible odds.
But, let's not get ahead of myself because that is not the only flaw this book has. I almost filed a sticky note with my thoughts on the problematic moments in this book. First, the quickest to mention. It used a slur. I don't think everyone knows it's a slur so I could give this a pass, but I don't feel like it.
Now on for a big problem this book had. It painted slaves in a good light. The whole premise of this book is whether team girls or boys will win and if boys win, Tedros (the love interest) will kill Sophie and Agatha, but if the girls win, the boys will surrender themselves to being slaves for the girls. Yep, you heard it here (not first bc hopefully someone else pointed this out in one of the 2592 reviews)folks. 2014 and he wrote a whole ass 400+ page book with girls talking about their excitement of owning human beings. Someone come cancel this man already, I'm done.
Oh wait, I'm not. I still have more left on my note. That's right, more negatives and I gave this book three stars? What the hell is wrong with me! So as mentioned, the school is divided into girls and boys. Now, one of the teachers is a gnome. Cute. This gnome is a male in the first book but when it comes to the second, they're a girl, but still look a lot like the male gnome who taught the class. Maybe it's a twin. Maybe they're genderfluid. Maybe it's none of your business. Now, what you don't do, is write about sexual abuse like it's no big thing. You see, a character just happens to have "checked" that this gnome is female. I'm assuming the teacher wasn't flaunting their genitals towards an underage student, if so that's another red flag for this book. So, my only conclusion is the character abused the gnome and checked their genitals without consent. Why am I angry about this? It's just a book you say! Once again, it leads back to impressionable minds. If it's okay for a girl to check without permission, maybe it's okay for someone else. Maybe I'm ranting and being over the top, but the blatant disgust this book makes me feel at times, my god.
Now, coming full circle, we're back at the misogyny. Wow, what a fun ride! Near the end of the book, Tedros is bonding with Filip and all that great stuff, but unfortunately, more negative remarks are thrown about. Tedros says Filip is "worse than a girl" because he is showing his emotions by crying. This also ties into my last point by the amount of toxic masculinity this book holds. I don't know why the author things boys shouldn't cry or care for other boys, but he came off as a firm believer in men hiding their feelings and it saddened me. Why shouldn't men and boys cry? It's a toxic idea that they're not allowed to show their emotions.
And there we go, all my negative impressions of the book. Laid out before you for you all to judge. Now, you're probably wondering why I gave this book a three-star rating if I clearly hated it so much. Well, I didn't hate the book. I just had to pretend I didn't see all the mess listed above and it was actually quite enjoyable. The second was definitely better than the first, especially watching Sophie and Agatha's friendship blossom, as that wasn't really a thing in the first book.
I felt warm inside reading this one, and it did leave me confused on what to rate it as I did, deep down, enjoy it. It was a fun read and I think I'm a fan of the series, but the number of problems that accused in under 500 pages was deeply concerning. I hope the author got better when it came to writing for the third book, but I know the chances are highly unlikely. Shame really, this could have been so much more enjoyable if all that mess had been avoided.