Review: Bride of the Crimson Queen

 


So uh this might literally be the worst book I’ve ever read. I genuinely don’t even know why I kept reading it except that it was oddly compelling to just watch it get worse and worse and worse. Basically the premise is that a young sorceress named Kami goes on a quest to destroy the Crimson Queen and save her town from monsters, except also the Crimson Queen is into Kami and wants her to come be her wife. And there is just nothing redeeming about any of it. The writing is bad, the plot is uninspiring and takes forever to actually go anywhere, and the way it handles gender and sexuality is just abhorrent. Spoilers from this point on, as it’s necessary to explain just how bad this was.

There were a lot of things about this book I found absolutely disgusting, but probably the most egregious was that Kami MAKES FRIENDS WITH HER ATTEMPTED RAPIST. There’s a dragon in human form named Skye and he decides he needs to have sex with Kami because monsters can smell virgins or something??? And he is going to rape her until other members of the group barge in and stop him. But he doesn’t really face any actual consequences other than a slap on the wrist. Doesn’t get kicked out. Nothing. And then Kami decides that actually he’s lovely and likable and she has to protect him and it’s just. So. Gross.

Next up, we have the Crimson Queen herself. It turns out that she is not a queen at all, but the prince of the family of vampires that Kami’s mother defeated, and he reincarnated himself in the form of a woman? I guess? But he doesn’t seem to identify with womanhood in any way, and I believe there are even a couple of comments about how this form is inferior, he wishes he had his body back, etc. But then he also talks about how he likes being in this form because it makes Kami less threatened by him. So not only is marketing this as a lesbian vampire situation false, it is actively maintaining dangerous narratives about men disguising themselves as women to pursue cis women. It’s awful.

Which of course also brings us to the idea that lesbianism is caused by feeling threatened by men. Almost every single male character in this book is vaguely creepy towards Kami, if not outright threatening. And if I recall correctly there’s an explicit line where she talks about liking women because they’re less threatening. That’s. Not. Why. Lesbians. Exist. 

Spoilers end.

So in conclusion, this was just awful. I can forgive poor writing, but I can’t forgive what comes across as an active attempt to mischaracterize queerness and demonize trans women.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Heartless Hunter

Image
  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It’s a fairly traditional enemies-to-lovers setup, and there’s not anything super out of the box, but I was shocked by how invested I got in Rune and Gideon’s relationship (I know – JAY getting invested in STRAIGHT PEOPLE?). There were also a few elements that I particularly enjoyed.  First, despite this being a YA romantasy, there’s actually a shocking amount of complexity and nuance that gets conveyed. We’re introduced to a world in which witches are brutally hunted and executed, which of course sets the reader up to side with Rune, the witch in hiding. But as the book goes on, it becomes very clear that the revolution that overthrew the witches was very much justified. The story does a really good job of showing the ways that privilege can change rapidly and how people can be talking about two entirely different things without even realizing it when it comes to power dynamics. Spoilers on this one! Another thing I thought this
Read more

Review: Cleat Cute

Image
  So I’ve seen a lot of stuff pitching this as lesbian Ted Lasso, and alas, it simply is not. The side characters are charming enough, but they lack the brilliance of the Ted Lasso ensemble and aren’t given much attention throughout the book. Grace and Phoebe are very much the primary focus, and almost every scene revolves around them. And yeah, it is a romance, but those of you who follow my reviews will know that I firmly believe that the best romances have excellent side characters and spend time developing other relationships – not to mention, other aspects of the characters. This book is trying to touch on some of those things, but the proportions weren’t quite right for me.  For instance, one plot element is Phoebe and Grace exploring their potential neurodivergence. I didn’t realize that would be a plot point going in, and I was excited when it was, but it wasn’t explored as much as it could have been. Grace in particular is really reduced to a throwaway line about maybe looking
Read more

Review: The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay

Image
  First off, I absolutely love both the cover and the title of this book. The art is just SO GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, those were probably the most compelling elements of the book to me. The story follows three best friends in Houston and their various senior year challenges, with the sort of core being Dawn’s entry to a film competition, after which the book is named. Each of the three girls has a very distinct story, connected to the others only by virtue of their friendship, and unfortunately I think this made the pacing kind of weird. When one character was having a crucial story moment, it felt like the other storylines were just kind of dragging along for the sake of being there.  One thing I did really appreciate was how this book handled representation. It switched the stereotypical roles that the best friends would have played based on their race – the Black character was the one with strict parents who fixated on her grades, and the Asian character was the one with a fun singl
Read more