lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2015-08-09 06:10 pm
lightreads) wrote2015-08-09 06:10 pm
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Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
The Girl of Fire and Thorns
2/5. Young adult fantasy about the sixteen-year-old princess married off to a neighboring kingdom, at least before her destiny catches up with her.
A solid meh. I try not to judge young adult too harshly because I'm very bad at knowing what is age appropriate and what isn't (and I frequently question the validity of the concept in the first place), so I try not to condemn a book for younger readers on the basis that it's boring as wallpaper. It might be that boring to me, but what do I know, to an eleven-year-old, this might be revelatory.
Unfortunately, if I had charge of an eleven-year-old, I wouldn't want her receiving these revelations. About a fat heroine with an eating disorder, whose fatness and disorder are treated as the same thing, and who – of course – becomes thin as part of her journey to power. I mean, I don't always have a good eye for fatphobia, as a congenitally skinny person, but come on.
However, the holy navel piercing is pretty funny. Like, for real. We know the heroine is chosen of the gods because they give her a special godly stone in her bellybutton. I could not make that up.
2/5. Young adult fantasy about the sixteen-year-old princess married off to a neighboring kingdom, at least before her destiny catches up with her.
A solid meh. I try not to judge young adult too harshly because I'm very bad at knowing what is age appropriate and what isn't (and I frequently question the validity of the concept in the first place), so I try not to condemn a book for younger readers on the basis that it's boring as wallpaper. It might be that boring to me, but what do I know, to an eleven-year-old, this might be revelatory.
Unfortunately, if I had charge of an eleven-year-old, I wouldn't want her receiving these revelations. About a fat heroine with an eating disorder, whose fatness and disorder are treated as the same thing, and who – of course – becomes thin as part of her journey to power. I mean, I don't always have a good eye for fatphobia, as a congenitally skinny person, but come on.
However, the holy navel piercing is pretty funny. Like, for real. We know the heroine is chosen of the gods because they give her a special godly stone in her bellybutton. I could not make that up.
no subject
The author has a blog post somewhere about she really understands that politics incredibly well because once she went up to a size 3, or something like that. And I try to make it a life choice not to judge any person who calls themselves fat (sincerely, not in the awful conversational way women are encouraged to say "oh, I am so fat and ugly!"), but putting this book in conversation with the blog post made me want to light the world on fire.
Spoilers Beneath:
I couldn't tell which was more aggravating: that it is clearly a representation of her character of character growth and moral development that she loses weight because she has been kidnapped and hauled across the desert for a month on a once-a-day diet of jerky and rat soup, or that her appearance in the moment comes when she vomits a lot and then experiences the radiance of god for the first time in her life.
Wow, I just reread through my Word document on this book and got angry all over again. And yet, despite all that, I did actually enjoy it. I liked the holy navel piercing.
no subject
Yes, all of that. I didn't know there would be more books -- though it doesn't surprise me -- but. There's a moment later on where she is busy thinking and scheming about something, and very tired and worried, and she realizes going to bed that she forgot to eat dinner. And this is clearly character development. Self-starving is character development. That's the part where I was done.
I did like how believably useless her husband was, though.