Entry tags:
Malice by John Gwynne
Malice
2/5. Chonker epic fantasy that is the first of four books about a prophesied god war where the avatar of good will fight the avatar of evil. Yeah, you’ve heard this one before.
The booktube girls got me again. They love this. I do not.
Partly, sure it’s the women problem. This book has many points-of-view. They are all men except for one, who is a girl but wait, come back, it’s fine, she’s not like other girls, you see, she likes knives. This is relevant because every single other male POV is drowning in boring warrior culture masculinity issues. Several of them are young, and all of them are concerned with what it means to be a man. And the ven diagram in this book between ‘man’ and ‘warrior’ is a near perfect circle. I don’t caaaaaaare.
Also, I was told that these books were “twisty” and would “make you really think about who is good and who is bad.” Except I got literally a third of the way through the first book, saw the writing on the wall and went ‘oh no, is what they’re talking about this?’ And googled, and, uh. Yep. The book is trying to set up this ambiguity where you supposedly aren’t sure who is the avatar of good and who is the avatar of evil, because their actions are deeply contextual and blah blah, you get it. Which, (1) I figured out who was who plain as day apparently more than two books before I was supposed to; and (2) it kind of offends me. The book is, it appears, trying to trick the reader by deploying some epic fantasy tropes and cliches, and it will then presumably do a rug pull at some point and go “ha ha, I fooled you into believing my cliché of believing in what it means to be noble and a good man, you should be a smarter reader.” Which, okay, fine, but to make that work, you have to write a book that doesn’t entirely depend for its every beat and gesture on boring tired epic fantasy cliches that it takes staggeringly seriously.
Anyway, whatever, I was pretty bored and annoyed from that point on.
Content notes: Animal harm, violence, bullying.
2/5. Chonker epic fantasy that is the first of four books about a prophesied god war where the avatar of good will fight the avatar of evil. Yeah, you’ve heard this one before.
The booktube girls got me again. They love this. I do not.
Partly, sure it’s the women problem. This book has many points-of-view. They are all men except for one, who is a girl but wait, come back, it’s fine, she’s not like other girls, you see, she likes knives. This is relevant because every single other male POV is drowning in boring warrior culture masculinity issues. Several of them are young, and all of them are concerned with what it means to be a man. And the ven diagram in this book between ‘man’ and ‘warrior’ is a near perfect circle. I don’t caaaaaaare.
Also, I was told that these books were “twisty” and would “make you really think about who is good and who is bad.” Except I got literally a third of the way through the first book, saw the writing on the wall and went ‘oh no, is what they’re talking about this?’ And googled, and, uh. Yep. The book is trying to set up this ambiguity where you supposedly aren’t sure who is the avatar of good and who is the avatar of evil, because their actions are deeply contextual and blah blah, you get it. Which, (1) I figured out who was who plain as day apparently more than two books before I was supposed to; and (2) it kind of offends me. The book is, it appears, trying to trick the reader by deploying some epic fantasy tropes and cliches, and it will then presumably do a rug pull at some point and go “ha ha, I fooled you into believing my cliché of believing in what it means to be noble and a good man, you should be a smarter reader.” Which, okay, fine, but to make that work, you have to write a book that doesn’t entirely depend for its every beat and gesture on boring tired epic fantasy cliches that it takes staggeringly seriously.
Anyway, whatever, I was pretty bored and annoyed from that point on.
Content notes: Animal harm, violence, bullying.