CBR7 6: Written In Red, Anne Bishop

Page count: 512, time taken: 4 hours

Driven by visions, Meg Corbyn flees her captors and ends up stumbling into a job as a Human Liaison in an Others enclave in Lakeside. She quickly finds acceptance from the shape-shifting inhabitants, except from Simon Wolfgard, leader of the Courtyard, and his father. Fortunately, Meg manages to help Simon's nephew through the worst of his severe PTSD, and Simon quickly becomes a fan. Which is useful when Meg's past catches up to her.

Good things about this book: the shape-shifting stuff is really cool. The mythology of the world is interesting, well thought-out and explained, and the non-human characters actually feel like non-humans, instead of excuses to have a lot of wild sex and growling. (There is a lot of growling though. Some tropes are too stubborn to die.) I found the Sanguinati particularly interesting, because I love me some vampires and these were good ones.

Other good things: the supporting cast were all really well characterised, and the villains of the novel were great. The pacing was good, and the book was long enough that the plot never felt too rushed, allowing things to develop in a reasonable amount of time. (That particularly is rare to see in urban fantasy, in my experience.)

Okay but slightly heavy-handed thing: moralisation about humanity being the true monsters. (More on this in my as-yet-unwritten reviews of the next books.) This is another trope of the genre, and it's a worthy message to try to get across, but it was not done with any great degree of subtlety.

Bad bits of the book: Meg was a magical special unique snowflake who made everyone love her instantly (with one or two exceptions) and she was precious and beloved and must be guarded and protected at all costs. I started calling her Meg Sue in my head pretty quickly. Even the parts where she fucks up, she does it in a really adorable and trying-to-help way which meant people forgave her really quickly.

Bit of the book which made me genuinely unhappy: there are repeated, graphic descriptions of self-harm which I personally found hit me far too close for comfort. There was also zero warning about it. (Granted, Meg being cassandra sangue, a blood prophet, is mentioned in the blurb a lot. That's really not the same as a content warning though.)

Here are some numbers for you. 1 in 5 women in the US has self-harmed. 1 in 7 men in the US has self-harmed. Think about those numbers for a short while. That's a lot of people. Whoever you are, you almost certainly know someone who uses or used self-harm as a means of coping. Of survival. I am one of those people. I know many others. The use and depiction of self-harm in this novel, and especially the sequels, made me uncomfortable in many, many ways.

The story was still pretty good though. If it had a content warning, I would happily give it 4 stars. But it doesn't. So it gets 3, and a caveat: do not read this series if you are particularly sensitive to descriptions of self-harm, or are at risk of using self-harm as a means of coping or control. I would be very wary about recommending it to any teenager without first discussing the issues.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

#CBR6 5: One Night of Danger, Clara Bayard

Page count: 231 pages
Time taken: 3 hours

Trigger warning: Domestic violence

Carly Chase works a dead-end job which she hates. After a particularly bad day at the office, she goes out for a night on the town with her BFF, and meets the sexy and surprisingly into her Sam Rollins. As her work life spirals deeper into crime and physical danger, she turns to Sam for help; but is he all he appears to be?

Unlike the first book of the Alpha's Touch box set, this one was surprisingly well written and enjoyable. There, I said it. From a feminist point of view, Carly is pretty awful, but she's well written enough that she has good reason to be, and while she does a whole bunch of things that one might generously call "of questionable judgement" they all serve to drive the plot forward, and it's difficult to see how the story could have progressed if she hadn't done them.

There are a few things that annoyed me - the erotica parts used really clichéd phrases in place of "erection" and "vagina" which I got really bored of, but I appreciate that many people prefer floaty euphemism so I'll put that down to taste. Carly is described as a "plus-sized beauty", but in fact there's nothing in the book to make me think she's particularly plus-sized at all, just tall and correspondingly bigger all over. It's possible I missed something, but all of the occasions where Carly's narration talks about it is really just stuff most women get paranoid about even when they've nothing to be worried about. Then again, that in itself might have been a commentary on the fact that society deems all women not built on petite lines as "plus-sized" even when they aren't, which as a taller than average woman myself I feel pretty strongly about.

Sam also bothered me as a romantic lead; Carly's mistakes were compounded by his, although his actions are presented as reasonable and logical, and his character seems an uncomfortable mix of proper hardcore alpha male and sensitive understanding and empowering feminist-appropriate type. As it's a first person narrative, and he's not the first person, the conflicting drives seem much more stark than they might have done if the novel had been from his perspective.

The plot was pretty light and relatively predictable, although there were a few nice touches in there which I didn't see coming. Where the book really stood out for me was the fact that Carly is the survivor of an abusive relationship, and has struggled her way back to herself; she suffers a couple of panic attacks and flashbacks over the course of the narrative. It's dealt with pretty sensitively, and it's not brushed off. Current estimates suggest that one billion women worldwide are victims of domestic abuse. That's 1,000,000,000 women, or the equivalent of the entire population of India. It's important that this is recognised in media and entertainment, because it's brushed under the carpet all too often.

Whilst it loses a point for its general predictability, I was impressed enough with its treatment of a difficult subject to add a point back, so this gets three stars: you probably won't hate yourself for reading this, but it won't blow your mind.

#CBR6 2: The Valley of Amazement, Amy Tan

Page count: 608 in hardback (I read an e-book version)
Time taken: 5 hours over two days

Violet is the daughter of a popular Shanghai hostess and madam at the start of the 20th century. The books follows her from childhood through to middle age, zooming in in important times and memories. Half-American, half-Chinese, Violet is pulled in several different directions by her heritage and the whims of fate, but is always saved by the strength of her relationships with others.

I read this book very quickly, in about five hours, which is testament to the pacing and plot of the novel. Violet is an interesting character; the book is essentially her life as she would tell it to someone else, and her narrative voice is a strong one. Set in a turbulent time in China's history, the cultural conflict was particularly resonant, and the book dealt very well with "passing" - Violet is white enough to pass for Southern European, and Chinese enough to pass for Manchu, with the right accessories. The discussion of race in the book is nuanced and subtle.

As the book progresses and time passes, Violet stops valuing herself the way others do and starts to value herself for who and what she is. It sometimes feels as though she is not the main character in her own life though; her mother cast a very large shadow over her, and even in the long years they are separated, Violet constantly compares herself to her mother. In fact, the main theme of the novel is "troubled relationships with parents" and this is particularly striking in the Mysterious Lulu Segment, which (whilst I appreciated getting to know the character through her own eyes) I could not find a reason for it being where it was or its relevance to the plot at the time.

I felt that the novel could have used more historical context than was given; I'm pretty well versed in that period of Chinese history (by which I mainly mean I read Wild Swans a bunch of times) so I knew the basics, but there was an awful lot left out. This could well have been a deliberate narrative choice to highlight the narrowness of Violet's world as a woman at that time, or how little life actually changed for people in the 40 years after the abdication of last Emperor and before the rise of Communism, but it was mostly just confusing when particular people were mentioned with no background as to who they were or why they were important.

The best thing about the book, for me, was its exploration of race and racism. The rest of the book felt much more shallow. There are other books - novels or factual - which deal with the subjects of enforced prostitution, life as a courtesan, life as a junior wife, and the gender politics of the place and time, with greater breadth and scope. Obviously, books are allowed to concentrate on one aspect of a situation more than others; but it came across as much more ambitious than it actually managed to a achieve.