Jennifer Roberson

Sigh. This book is so dated. It is mired in a kind of second-wave white woman feminist writing where a woman encounters several deeply misogynistic cultures and is constantly being told " a woman with a sword there is no such thing" to which she responds "not only am I a swordswoman, I am the best one." It also doesn't help that these misogynistic cultures are heavily coded to be allegories for non-white peoples and non-white countries trafficking in such orientalist tropes as cannibalism, white slavery (this is actually the crux of the entire plot), polygamy etcetera (and I have to say that this author seems to be particularly guilty of this because even though I enjoy shapechangers! for its pulpy-ness, I do think it is kind of a similarly racist portrayal of indigenous people). I did think that the dynamic between tiger and del is very good because the arc is tiger's and he is allowed to grow out of his misogyny. The problem with every single person being a misogynist is that del's personality gets relegated to constantly telling people that she can do the thing, and it is exhausting. So we don't really get told important things about del by del herself. Instead we have other characters explaining del's backstory. This isn't helped by the fact that this book is entirely Tiger's pov, so we don't really get inner world.… (mer)

Sigh. This book is so dated. It is mired in a kind of second-wave white woman feminist writing where a woman encounters several deeply misogynistic cultures and is constantly being told " a woman with a sword there is no such thing" to which she responds "not only am I a swordswoman, I am the best one." It also doesn't help that these misogynistic cultures are heavily coded to be allegories for non-white peoples and non-white countries trafficking in such orientalist tropes as cannibalism, white slavery (this is actually the crux of the entire plot), polygamy etcetera (and I have to say that this author seems to be particularly guilty of this because even though I enjoy shapechangers! for its pulpy-ness, I do think it is kind of a similarly racist portrayal of indigenous people). I did think that the dynamic between tiger and del is very good because the arc is tiger's and he is allowed to grow out of his misogyny. The problem with every single person being a misogynist is that del's personality gets relegated to constantly telling people that she can do the thing, and it is exhausting. So we don't really get told important things about del by del herself. Instead we have other characters explaining del's backstory. This isn't helped by the fact that this book is entirely Tiger's pov, so we don't really get inner world.… (mer)

Sorcerer-painters frolic in a pseudo-Renaissance Italian city-state. The three authors split the book into three sections, and I liked each section about as much as I like each author. The first section felt repetitious and redundant; the second section combined candy-colored central characters with the wonderfully Machiavellian maneuverings of the villainous protagonist; and the third section was good but marred by wrapping up all the threads introduced in the first two sections. All together, it was...eh.… (mer)