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A review by beforeviolets
Remedial Magic by Melissa Marr
Did not finish book. Stopped at 20%.
I was lent an ARC of this book by a bookseller friend, I was not sent this by the publisher. Though, per usual, this is my honest review.
DNF p. 66
I'm literally begging authors to unpack their implicit biases of white supremacy and ableism before they write cozy fantasy books.
This is a problem that has continued to grow in cozy fantasy and romantasy as genres, in which authors strive to create idyllic and comforting stories for their readers to “escape into.” And what is more comfortable than the familiar, than the unconfrontational? So they seek to create safe spaces without considering what is necessary for a safe space actually safe for the people who need it most (aka marginalized people). And instead they use these “escapist” narratives and “safe spaces” as a bubble to protect themselves from the discomfort of confronting their own biases. And so these stories tend to tread harmful ground by blindly and unknowingly perpetrating bigoted narratives.
TOR actually published a really wonderful article (ironically) about this problem. Though this article very specifically talks about racism in witchy romantasies, the sentiment can be applied to other pillars of white supremacy as well as other types of cozy fantasy and romantasy:
"SFF and romance both promise escape, but they falter when they forget that we cannot escape to without also escaping from. When we step back from the sparkling overlay of a book’s premise, we discover that we have ended up on the same old used paths, hiding the selfsame horrors from which we were promised escape beneath the veneers of fairy tale, utopia, or comfort. Whatever fictional or nonfictional marginalizations a white character may possess, they exist within the protective sphere of whiteness, and it is the moral imperative of white authors to grapple with that fact when we write about power, about history, about oppression—or else not to write about those things at all."
I highly recommend reading the whole article, and using it as a jumping-off point to do some learning and unlearning about what fantasy stories (especially cozy ones) have to say about power and marginalization: https://www.tor.com/2023/08/08/the-pr...
In this book's case, these issues bled into the story very obviously and very early on.
Upon meeting our third POV character, within a matter of pages, we are slapped in the face with a Harry Potter reference as the character finds out he's magical: “Yer a wizard, Dan.” In 2023. In a LGBTQ+ book. Truly, I do not understand in this day and age how these references continue to seep through stories, even after other books have made active changes to take out HP references from previous printings. If at this point you are not aware of JKR’s violent TERFism or the way Harry Potter has become a platform of bigotry (though of course, the books have always been riddled with transphobia, antisemitism, racism, a butchered Holocaust metaphor, and more since their inception. But as of recent, more and more right-wing individuals have been brought into the development of the franchise’s content, creating a huge escalation in the level of this bigotry. I highly recommend looking into the VERY clear antisemitism and racism of Hogwarts Legacy), or are not actively changing the way you engage with HP media because of it, then I don’t know what you’re doing.
And then, we learn that this character has been cured of cancer immediately upon entering the magical realm. A magical healing trope will always make me suck my teeth and roll my eyes, but after just a couple pages, the rhetoric escalated and became a little too clear: “Magic self-repairs the host. Witches, are, in essence, hosts to magic.” And we are told that if this character returns to the human world, his cancer will return. So… there’s no such thing as disabled witches, or disability in the magical world in general. Which of course, is incredibly alienating to any disabled reader, but also sheds light on precisely what this author would define as “idyllic” and “cozy”: a world free of disability.
As always, I don't feel good writing this review. I am not pleased or smug or joyful to report these findings. It's never fun to come across these sort of things in stories. But sadly, with the way cozy fantasy and romantasy (especially witchy ones) have been following a trend of pushing under-the-radar accidental bigotry and shrugging any criticism or deeper thought off with an "it's not that deep, it's just a silly fantasy story", I was not surprised to find content like this.
I will most definitely be emailing the publisher with my feedback, in hopes that this content will be changed in the final copies. Fingers crossed it is.
CW (so far): ableism (complacent in text), car accident, cancer, hospitalization, magical healing trope, death of parents (past), homophobia (mention)
DNF p. 66
I'm literally begging authors to unpack their implicit biases of white supremacy and ableism before they write cozy fantasy books.
This is a problem that has continued to grow in cozy fantasy and romantasy as genres, in which authors strive to create idyllic and comforting stories for their readers to “escape into.” And what is more comfortable than the familiar, than the unconfrontational? So they seek to create safe spaces without considering what is necessary for a safe space actually safe for the people who need it most (aka marginalized people). And instead they use these “escapist” narratives and “safe spaces” as a bubble to protect themselves from the discomfort of confronting their own biases. And so these stories tend to tread harmful ground by blindly and unknowingly perpetrating bigoted narratives.
TOR actually published a really wonderful article (ironically) about this problem. Though this article very specifically talks about racism in witchy romantasies, the sentiment can be applied to other pillars of white supremacy as well as other types of cozy fantasy and romantasy:
"SFF and romance both promise escape, but they falter when they forget that we cannot escape to without also escaping from. When we step back from the sparkling overlay of a book’s premise, we discover that we have ended up on the same old used paths, hiding the selfsame horrors from which we were promised escape beneath the veneers of fairy tale, utopia, or comfort. Whatever fictional or nonfictional marginalizations a white character may possess, they exist within the protective sphere of whiteness, and it is the moral imperative of white authors to grapple with that fact when we write about power, about history, about oppression—or else not to write about those things at all."
I highly recommend reading the whole article, and using it as a jumping-off point to do some learning and unlearning about what fantasy stories (especially cozy ones) have to say about power and marginalization: https://www.tor.com/2023/08/08/the-pr...
In this book's case, these issues bled into the story very obviously and very early on.
Upon meeting our third POV character, within a matter of pages, we are slapped in the face with a Harry Potter reference as the character finds out he's magical: “Yer a wizard, Dan.” In 2023. In a LGBTQ+ book. Truly, I do not understand in this day and age how these references continue to seep through stories, even after other books have made active changes to take out HP references from previous printings. If at this point you are not aware of JKR’s violent TERFism or the way Harry Potter has become a platform of bigotry (though of course, the books have always been riddled with transphobia, antisemitism, racism, a butchered Holocaust metaphor, and more since their inception. But as of recent, more and more right-wing individuals have been brought into the development of the franchise’s content, creating a huge escalation in the level of this bigotry. I highly recommend looking into the VERY clear antisemitism and racism of Hogwarts Legacy), or are not actively changing the way you engage with HP media because of it, then I don’t know what you’re doing.
And then, we learn that this character has been cured of cancer immediately upon entering the magical realm. A magical healing trope will always make me suck my teeth and roll my eyes, but after just a couple pages, the rhetoric escalated and became a little too clear: “Magic self-repairs the host. Witches, are, in essence, hosts to magic.” And we are told that if this character returns to the human world, his cancer will return. So… there’s no such thing as disabled witches, or disability in the magical world in general. Which of course, is incredibly alienating to any disabled reader, but also sheds light on precisely what this author would define as “idyllic” and “cozy”: a world free of disability.
As always, I don't feel good writing this review. I am not pleased or smug or joyful to report these findings. It's never fun to come across these sort of things in stories. But sadly, with the way cozy fantasy and romantasy (especially witchy ones) have been following a trend of pushing under-the-radar accidental bigotry and shrugging any criticism or deeper thought off with an "it's not that deep, it's just a silly fantasy story", I was not surprised to find content like this.
I will most definitely be emailing the publisher with my feedback, in hopes that this content will be changed in the final copies. Fingers crossed it is.
CW (so far): ableism (complacent in text), car accident, cancer, hospitalization, magical healing trope, death of parents (past), homophobia (mention)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism and Car accident
Moderate: Cancer
Minor: Homophobia and Death of parent