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okay everyone needs to shut up and read The Wolf Den series RIGHT NOW.
it’s set in Pompeii (before Vesuvius blew) and it’s about a woman enslaved in a brothel and trying to gain her freedom. fair warning, it will piss you off with the way men treat her and the women around her. but it is sooo good, written well, and you’ll get attached to these women like you know them personally.
(TW for rape, domestic violence, misogyny, slavery, suicide,)
then why would i care???
so i’m reading book 2 of the Night Angel trilogy, Shadow’s Edge, and… it’s just really clear to me that a lot of male fantasy authors cannot conceive of a world without misogyny.
in this world alone, there’s magic, ppl that are immortal, a person who can prophesy the future, dragons! etc. but rampant, horrifying misogyny is still prevalent why?? i keep reading and i see no good reason why women are treated like shit all throughout. “it’s a medieval fantasy tho HUR DURR” shut up, if dragons can exist, why can’t a society that treats women as equals?
there’s literally a girl who is the apprentice of a (male) ASSASSIN and i thought, okay, here’s a female character who will be taken seriously but NO, bc she gets regularly raped by said assassin. she’s badass but how many times does she have to dress provocatively to distract a male with her cleavage to get what she needs from him? why does she have to be complicit in her own objectification whereas the main character, a male assassin, somehow comes up with more creative ways to reach his goals?
not only that, there’s rape, sexual abuse, constant objectification. even small comments like when someone said a woman wouldn’t be taken seriously as a queen or leader of a nation. that true of real life–why does that have to be true in this world??
the only strong female main character would have to be a woman who’s literally a madame of a brothel, a place where women flock to to work when they have no choice (and it’s made clear it’s not a choice). they go to hers bc she treats them slightly better than other brothel owners would. and even she’s not present much.
and for some reason, this author likes to mention the ages of girls whenever he has the chance to, when they’re like 15, 16, 17, and put in compromising situations open to sexual abuse? for example, he writes, ‘Daydra looked like a new woman. Though barely seventeen, she’d been a successful prostitute before the invasion, and tonight Kaldrosa saw why she had done so well.’ i haven’t kept track of the other times, but IM TELLING YOU literally so many times their ages have to be pointed out, like i’m not allowed to forget these are actual children being abused by grown men. i find it shady but that’s just me.
anyways i think only a very small handful of female characters have either not been raped, are not demeaned for being women, or haven’t started working at the brothel. there’s a lot of female characters and it says a lot that i can’t say this for most of them. this attitude to and opinion of women makes no room for actual great female characters to be at the forefront, to actually matter. bc only the men can be strong. only the men get taken seriously.
this book is written as if it never even crossed the writer’s mind that women might actually read this series. it’s just tiring.
unrelated, but this book is also giving middle book syndrome.
i’m 100 pages into Wolf Hall and i’m kinda lost.
didn’t even realise i read 7 books this month alone. nice
oh my god… The Bone Ships by RJ Barker… was AMAZING.
you know that feeling you get when you’re just totally immersed in a story? that’s exactly how i felt the whole time! especially with some of the music i was listening to as well.
if you like reading about pirates, magic ships, dragons, betrayal, found family, war, loveable characters, creepy monsters, so much adventure, with cool plot twists, then this is the book for you! there’s also a diverse range of personalities between the female characters (which is a breath of fresh air after reading The Stand by Stephen King ngl) and a lot of them are actually physically strong - i’m not talking Black Widow skinny while being a badass fighter strong, but a lot of these women are described as big and muscly, and i don’t see that often. and oh my god you will fall in love with these women (like, Meas Gilbryn can be my shipwife in more ways than one js). also there’s no unnecessary het romances!
i think it’s taken Gideon the Ninth’s place as fav book of the year (so far, since it’s November but i don’t think anything else will top it tbf).
if you want inspiration to kill your husband or bf, or you just want to hate men more, you should read The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff. it’s hilarious and disturbing at the same time.
(TW for: domestic violence, sexual assault, mentions of rape)
so i read Plain Bad Heroines. the book was okay (i expected more but i didn’t hate it), and it’s full of lesbian relationships, but the absolute over-the-top use of the slur ‘queer’ just casually thrown around at every opportunity? off-putting.
so it’s written as a dual timeline between characters in 1902 and present day. it’s about two girls who fell in love in 1902, and then tragically died being stung to death together by a swarm of wasps. in the present day, someone wrote a book about them and now they’re making a movie out of it. a bunch of scary shit happens but that’s besides my point.
tell me why the characters in the present day are referring to two girls from 1902 who were in love with each other as ‘queer’?? i literally read queer more than the term lesbian.
is this what i just have to accept if i read books with lesbians in them that have been published in the last 10 years? seriously?
