ladybusiness | (Reply)

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I followed the discussion of Baru Cormorant when there was the argument about whether it should be called queer tragedy, which devolved into a rather circular argument about authorial identity. I started with this podcast and ended up disagreeing rather heartily with a critic I generally agree almost always agree with over semantics of all things. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...just because we love something doesn't mean it's not playing with particular toxic tropes and that it's somehow immune to those criticisms because it was attempting to subvert something.

I came down on this side of things pretty firmly, though. There is a second book that seems sort of firm (although I am basing it off the perspective of a reviewer I know who is deeper in the industry than I am, so grain of salt there) which might change things for the character and bring things around to a more hopeful resolution. But then that goes back to my problem of putting up with a book that punches you in the face just to get to content that includes you later on. That's almost worse than the scarcity issue! Anyway, I decided not to read that book based on reviews and I'm VERY glad I made that decision after dealing with City of Stairs. I'm sitting on the "call me when you stop killing the queers for ANY REASON, SF authors!" fence these days.

Karen Memory is steampunk and I've always assumed a light touch was a feature of the genre, versus other types of SF that dig deeper into the world building. But I definitely see that criticism of the narrative; I was just so hungry for positive stories where queers characters got to be happy and save the day that I found it wonderful and clung to it. I need to make Max Gladstone a priority this year for sure; he's been on my to-read list for over two years now!