Spiritomb

I could not put this book down. The author researched for this book extremely well, and I felt like Emily and Claire had an immense amount of depth as characters. I really enjoyed that Claire's religion was a motivator for accepting Emily as a woman, too, because I think I've read only one other book where a strongly religious character believes that their religious teachings mean they should be supportive of LGBT people. Emily felt like such a real person to me while reading. I'm really glad this book exists.

Dawkins has a very superficial understanding of the theistic arguments he writes about, and a very poor understanding of how to write an argument. He restates atheist arguments that have been around for 400 years, and doesn't think it necessary to address theists' objections to them. His argument that agnostics bend over backwards to please theists is unsubstantiated. From that evolution doesn't require god(s) to explain it, it does not deductively follow “gods don't exist.” Such metaphysical claims as “gods exist” and “there are no gods” (also: “events have causes”) are unfalsifiable and therefore not a possible subject of scientific inquiry. His claim that every “true” scientist was a secret (or public) atheist is also unsubstantiated.

If I could have given this book zero stars, I would have.

I found a lot of the advice in this book helpful in maintaining my own mental well-being in my relationship with my mother, but I'm giving this book three stars because a decent chunk was just not applicable to me as an autistic person, an autistic parent, and an autistic child of undiagnosed neurodivergent parents. In the list of traits of an emotionally immature person, several were autistic traits. Autistic traits may make socializing difficult, but they don't inhibit the ability to have equitable relationships with others. My relationships to other autistic people have had far less emotional immaturity than my relationships to non-autistic people.

The section describing different types of empathy—cognitive empathy being ability to know what others are feeling, and emotional empathy being the ability to resonate with or feel others' feelings—makes the argument that low emotional empathy produces tendencies to be entitled, controlling or cruel. The book fails to say that cognitive empathy is something that is learned—we aren't born with the ability to figure out others' emotions. It has also not been shown that emotional empathy can't be learned. My low emotional empathy has never caused me to see myself as entitled to other people's time, energy or love. I felt like the author was
identifying the wrong causes—entitlement is about your deeply held values, not about your brain's abilities.

The assumption that these types of empathy are innate and unchanging muddles the determination of moral culpability: if someone could not have acted otherwise, they aren't morally responsible. Though it's beyond the scope of the book to rehabilitate them, the fact remains that emotionally immature parents could have acted otherwise, and that is the only way we can say they did things that were wrong.

I found the sections on how to be firm with my boundaries very helpful. Overall, I think this book will potentially help a lot of people! But it does a small contribution to the misunderstanding and harm of autistic people.

This book starts slowly and very suddenly in the latter third of it, the pace quickens. I have heard others be critical of the slow pacing, but I feel like it was a deliberate choice to give the reader a sense of how a city person like Watson experiences rural life.

I LOVE the worldbuilding of dragons that use mechanical technology and hoard knowledge. Dragon culture's hyper-rationality reminded me a lot of Vulcan culture from Star Trek, especially the meditation. I also liked the portrayal of Seraphina's skin care routine: her scales get unbearably itchy unless she bathes every day and oils them. Being half-dragon seemed very much like an analogy for being autistic: Seraphina knows that she doesn't visibly emote like others, she has a lot of sensory defensiveness, and she masks.

The complex political situations are engaging and nuanced. The conflict between humans and dragons is not one where there's a clear-cut resolution. The nativist gang that targets dragons is believable. The religion of the Goreddi involves not gods but a collective of saints, and the rituals reminded me a lot of Catholicism.

I am very excited to read more of this series.