Marthia
Probably a DNF for me, I'll update this if I do finish the book. This was a book club pick and we were all not quite aware of it being YA when it was voted on, and a lot of my general disinterest in the plot and writing style can be explained by that, which is why I'm omitting a star rating because I'm just not in the target demographic. EDIT: I realized you can't omit the star rating and the site just counts it as 0 stars. Oops.
I could probably deal with this but I have a bigger issue with how the protagonist is written. Benji grew up in a fundamentalist, apocalyptic Christian cult but when he escapes from there and joins a group of queer teenagers he orders in perfect woke, shocking the ALC and me, the reader. He doesn't stumble over neopronouns, defaults to describing a group of female presenting people as "femmes" instead of girls and his only reaction to seeing non white people is to stare a little bit before he immediately catches himself without anyone noticing it.
I understand why you wouldn't want the protagonist in your queer YA novel to misgender people, even on accident, but having your (white) protagonist be perfectly woke in spite of the conservative Christian upbringing that he just escaped just kinda sucks. It makes Benji feel incoherent as a character and the story as a whole feel like a fantasy of being a perfect ally to everyone the second you realize you realize you are queer yourself without ever having to put any work in or having to change your perspective.
Reading the description, you'd think that Benji being infected with a bioweapon that can turn him into a monster might be some kind of metaphor for subconscious conservative bias and that "controlling the monster" meant making an active attempt to unlearn what the cult taught him. This doesn't appear to be the case, and yeah, it's usually unfair to judge a book for not being what you imagined it would be, but I really wish there was something to dig into here besides wish fulfillment. Yeah the setting is gorey and dystopian, but this all just serves a fantasy of escaping conservative parents and hanging out with the awesome badass gay people.
Speaking of the description, Annihilation and the Locked Tomb are some of my all-time favorites and I genuinely don't see the comparison with either (especially not Annihilation! TLT at least has queer teenagers)
Probably a DNF for me, I'll update this if I do finish the book. This was a book club pick and we were all not quite aware of it being YA when it was voted on, and a lot of my general disinterest in the plot and writing style can be explained by that, which is why I'm omitting a star rating because I'm just not in the target demographic. EDIT: I realized you can't omit the star rating and the site just counts it as 0 stars. Oops.
I could probably deal with this but I have a bigger issue with how the protagonist is written. Benji grew up in a fundamentalist, apocalyptic Christian cult but when he escapes from there and joins a group of queer teenagers he orders in perfect woke, shocking the ALC and me, the reader. He doesn't stumble over neopronouns, defaults to describing a group of female presenting people as "femmes" instead of girls and his only reaction to seeing non white people is to stare a little bit before he immediately catches himself without anyone noticing it.
I understand why you wouldn't want the protagonist in your queer YA novel to misgender people, even on accident, but having your (white) protagonist be perfectly woke in spite of the conservative Christian upbringing that he just escaped just kinda sucks. It makes Benji feel incoherent as a character and the story as a whole feel like a fantasy of being a perfect ally to everyone the second you realize you realize you are queer yourself without ever having to put any work in or having to change your perspective.
Reading the description, you'd think that Benji being infected with a bioweapon that can turn him into a monster might be some kind of metaphor for subconscious conservative bias and that "controlling the monster" meant making an active attempt to unlearn what the cult taught him. This doesn't appear to be the case, and yeah, it's usually unfair to judge a book for not being what you imagined it would be, but I really wish there was something to dig into here besides wish fulfillment. Yeah the setting is gorey and dystopian, but this all just serves a fantasy of escaping conservative parents and hanging out with the awesome badass gay people.
Speaking of the description, Annihilation and the Locked Tomb are some of my all-time favorites and I genuinely don't see the comparison with either (especially not Annihilation! TLT at least has queer teenagers)