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brother-emperors · 10 months

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something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

#perseus #danae #komiks tag #long post #every other week i start to say something about how greek heroes are a good case study in diaspora and exile trauma #but man perseus makes me so sad. so does danae. she loves her son :(#perseus turning a whole island to stone is a huge mood. i would also do that if i were him #anyway (salutes) take care everyone i gotta watch yunho's new video it looks like a fucking movie im so excited #(i singled out ovid bc i remember the fucking shit perseus discourse that ran through this site. i remember #im preemptively loading a gun and pointing at it before it can touch this post #it hasn't died out either i see it on twitter all the time in the most ANNOYING ways possible i am TIRED #esp bc they're actually doing medusa a narrative disservice like congrats! you made it worse! stop telling me it's better!!!!)#it’s all greek to me

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lokiessnyx · 1 year

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Review Of Savage Lands #1

You know I am beginning to understand book burning. Yes it is truly that bad.

I saw this book the other day and I saw that a reviewer I liked gave this book four stars and I decided that I would try it. From the second chapter I realized what a big mistake I made.

We start the book with our main character obviously bexelely. I must warn you that I cannot be bothered to write her ridiculous name properly. So bexly is about to steal supplies from trains to give to the poor with her best friend Caden. Now she makes sure to tell us that she is not doing it for the poor people, no she does it for the thrill. Now that's fine, not everyone has to be a paragon of goodness.

Now we are made to believe she is so great at doing this, and I just wonder how she has never been caught. For the two times raiding we see her be an idiot, waste time, and nearly get caught the first time and actually get caught the second time.

Now she gets her best friend in trouble since his father is someone important and he gets mad at her. They have some boring teenage romance angst going on between them. Now though I do agree that Beatly is an idiot, I'm not going to excuse Caden caught she did not drag him away unconscious, he agreed to help her so it's also on him.

Now the second chapter is where I encountered the second problem.

I knew I was different from most girls around here. My Russian and Irish roots gave me pale skin, but extremely dark and sharp features. “Unique” and “stunning” were words I heard the most, along with “intimidating.” I had a lot of male attention and interest, but most guys stayed away, like an invisible line had been drawn around me. Either they were scared of me or didn’t want to cross the most formidable cadet at the school.

--Chapter 2.

Our main character was a vain brat and for some reason everyone is in love with her and she makes sure to let you know that. Not only does she repeat how slim and inhumanely beautiful she is, other people do.

“Sergiu?” I gagged. “Are you serious? Gross. Plus, haven’t you heard the rumors about him?”

“His kink is beating up prostitutes he’s screwing, and he won’t date anyone because he thinks he’s above everyone?” She shrugged. “Yeah, but think how riled up Caden would get if you flirted with him. Might finally get him to act. Because Sergiu would fall over his tongue to get to you. All men do.”

The men really took it personally, proving sexism was still alive and well. Not just because I was a slim, petite-boned girl, but it seemed to piss the boys off that I was pretty too. As if that was the reason they lost their concentration. As if someone who looked as I did shouldn’t be able to outmatch them.

-- Chapter Three

I wasn’t the kind of girl who enjoyed getting dressed up in torturous outfits and shoes, and I was rarely on my best behavior with stuffy, boring people. I’d rather be in my cargo pants and tank hanging out with Caden, drinking palinka.

-- Chapter Three

Of course she is not like other girls.

“Yes, she is.” Vale chuckled, stepping up to me. “Most grown men, fae or human, pee their pants when we show up.” He pressed the gun I’d briefly held into my temple while the healer dressed my wounds. “You are a spirited one. Gave me a little rush, human.”

--Chapter 8

“It’s only been six days since her capture; she is still healing, but don’t underestimate her,” Sloane added, pushing me forward toward them.

--Chapter 9.

Even the people that hate her kind and want to enslave her are complementing her. It's annoying every time it happens cause its just a waste of page. Like we know girl.

Back to the narration. So she is in her fight academy or something where she is getting her butt kicked because she did not sleep well. The guy she is fighting with that for reason want to sleep with her calls her a hoe and says she slept with him years ago and the class is all fascinated with all this tea but Berdly wont allow this blow to her ego so she gives this wonderful comeback:

“Honestly, you were so incompetent in bed, I’d be surprised if you can even get yourself off.” My voice went low and husky.

There was a beat.

“Oooohhhh, dammmnnn!” A few guys laughed, covering their mouths in shock.

--Chapter 3

What a middle school insult like if you ever said that as a comeback in my class you would have been laughed at and mocked. Like its so lame. This class must be starved for comebacks if that comeback warrants ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh and dammmmmmmmmmnnn. See how annoying that is and that leads to me third problem with this book. The author's exclamations. She stretches out words needlessly for no reason and for me of all people to notice it. It was done a lot.

Anyway, she beats him up because she is so wonderful and sees Caden randomly leaning on a wall looking mad about Berdly sleeping with that guy, and leaves. Her best friend comes up and the interaction goes like this:

Random friend whose name I do not remember: Oh my gosh girl did you really sleep with that guy. You are soooo much better than him.

Berdly: I know right.

Friend: So spill the tea, what's going on with you and Caden. He looked so pissed with Aron saying those stuff.

Berdly: Oh, we're just friends and he doesn't like me and it's not like we almost kissed yesterday or something.

Friend: Omg girl. I have the perfect plan for you guys to get together. So at the party tonight---

Berdly: What party?

Friend: The one Caden's dad is hosting for the official visitor.

Berdly: Oh I don't care about stuff like that at all. I'd rather be drinking with the boys.

Friend: Whatever back to my plan. So you know Caden was just angry at you for sleeping with another guy who is a jerk and treats you like crap, I want you to go flirt with that guy that beats the woman he sleeps with and Caden will be so jealous and confess to you. This will totes not go wrong at all. Also did I mention that you are beautiful.

After that horrible exchange we cut to Bexly dressing for the party while Caden's mum tells her that she is beautiful and there was time when woman had a choice to marry refuses to elaborate and leaves.

She gets to the party and she notices Caden is drinking and she immediately assumes it's because of her because of course everything revolves around her. They have a then boring melodramatic conversation where they almost confess their love for each other but are conveniently interrupted by Caden's father who takes them to meet the visiting official after a while. We then have a truly disgusting paragraph about the man's wife.

“Yes. We do.” Lazar[visitng official] twisted to peer behind him, flicking his head at the figures. His stunning wife, Sorina, stepped forward, silent and demure. She used to model, prostitute, and work in adult movies before he pulled her from the trenches and made her rich and pampered. He treated her similar to a second-class citizen, and probably reminded her at every turn he could send her back into poverty’s cruel embrace. She smiled and did all the right things but was vacant and dead behind her eyes. I wanted to feel bad for her, but she made her own bed…

Really Bexly. A woman who lives in the dregs and poverty and probably was forced to sell her body for money find a man who marries her and shares his riches with her. He treats her badly but she can't leave because she is will return to prostitution and poverty and it's her fault not the fault of the system you live in or something. The system that Bexly benefits her. This is the moment when this book became truly bad to me.

Caden's Dad then reveals he plans to marry her off to the visiting official's son [the one who beats the woman he sleeps with]. Bexly is horrified at this but I could only think that well, you made your own bed.

Caden gets pissed off and leaves. Bexly then realizes that the reason she is being married off is because Caden's Dad want her to be the woman who will take control over the official's land. Bexly mentally swears to put everything she has learned to good use and she will made him proud and this was the one moment I sensed something good in this book but it is promptly thrown away a few lines later.

Bexly still feels overwhelmed by this and run away from the party in heels. I have to give her that though, running with heels *shudders*. She meets up with Caden drunk and lo and behold he confesses his love to her and we have this interaction that had me wondering what in the Romeo and Juliet was I reading:

“Why?” he snapped back to me. “We should probably start learning not to. You’ll soon be confiding in your husband.”

“Stop.” My lip lifted in a grimace. “Don’t even start that shit. You think I want this? You think this is what I dreamed of? The man I wanted to spend my life with?”

“Then refuse.”

“Refuse?” A barked laugh tore at my throat. “Like it’s so easy.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t make this sound as if it’s simple. I have nothing, Caden. Nothing.”

***

Caden froze, not moving away, but not moving closer, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Brex, don’t.”

“Why?” Pain and desperation rang in the single word like a bell. “Don’t you want to kiss me?”

His chest moved violently up and down. “More than you know.”

“Then please, Caden.”

Agony flinched his cheek. “I can’t.”

Rejection filled my eyes, shattering my chest as if ice cracking open.

He grabbed my cheek, his warm palm cupping my face, his eyes wild and desperate.

***

“That’s why I can’t.” Both his hands slid along my jaw, drawing me closer to him, his mouth skimming mine. “Because if I get a taste of you, I will never be able to let you go. And seeing you with Sergiu…it will destroy me.” He leaned his forehead into mine, torturing me with the proximity of his lips, his hot breath against my mouth.

***

He inhaled sharply, like I was breaking him down. His mouth skated over mine, landing on the corner of my lips, kissing me softly. “I can’t. Kissing you, being with you, will destroy me. I must do the right thing.” He drew back, tearing my heart from my chest, gutting me, bleeding out my hope. “Ask anything else from me, and I will give it to you. But this I can’t. I won’t come back from it.”

---Chapter Six.

Like we get it guy, smooching our lovely MC will destroy you. Anyway she decided to take advantage of this moments and decides to go raid the Trains again. He's reluctant but she guilt-trips him.

At this point I was only reading to see the Warwick guy the summary mentioned. I mean a good love interest can change a book. So I continued on.

So once again we see how much of brilliant thief she is. She waste time, ignored her lookout and only left at the last moment when the guards were already upon them. They run, Caden escapes and our main character gets shot.

Would have been a wonderful ending but the Fae save her with magic or something and she lives. She attacks some of them, she gets her butt handed to her but then her captors who loathe her kind go on to say how wonderful she is.

At this point, I just gave up. Like no man, Warwick or whatever is worth the irrational rage I feel when I read another line. So this is the first Dnf of the year which I dropped because it was straight up bad.

If the writing was at least beautiful or something at least that would have made the book more bearable but no it reads like a mildly edited first draft.

Lets hope I have better luck with the next book I read.

1 Star.

#book blog #book review #savage land #bad books #onestar #rubbish #rubbish book #Febuary books #Febuary #But to be honest it feels good to hate something abit #Letting it out is fun #Review #2023 Books #Ran out of tags

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