Swipe:

"Even when the action resumes, however, it’s all surprisingly unengaging. This may be a flaw of the medium and not the work itself. The problem lies in the need to keep the era recognizably Victorian, when really, it shouldn’t be. Actual Victorian mores and politics were a reaction to a specific series of historical events, technological and scientific developments, and ethical trends in which the commodification of people was de rigueur. In “The Tropic of Serpents” (as in similar neo-Victorian works), these ugly bits of real history are elided. There’s little mention here of an international slave trade, no British Raj. There’s some space allotted to a push by Western powers to get access to the iron of other lands, but this is relevant only in how it threatens the protagonist’s goals: Properly treated, dragon bone is stronger than iron. She fears a speculative run that could wipe out the beasts. In a way, this illustrates the niggling problem with neo-Victorian fiction. That Isabella frets so obsessively about conservationism while the nation around her ratchets toward war is ­actually spot on as an example of a colonizer’s patronizing attitude — but not enough actual colonialism exists in this world to support that attitude. And meanwhile the story’s focus on the liberation of only wealthy, white and otherwise highly privileged women ignores the grassroots-driven, labor-movement-inflected struggle that actually took place in our own world’s England. All of this actually serves to emphasize what’s been left out of these idealized Victorian worlds, and trivialize the struggles and complexities that made the era fascinating in real life.

"Which is fine, for readers who aren’t especially interested in engaging with those complexities. In that case, the story is exactly what it says on the tin: a rollicking adventure in which women wearing unnerving amounts of underwear tromp through jungles on dragon-hunting safaris. Really, that should be more than enough for just about everyone."

*****

HOLY FUCK!!!

If that isn't the most eloquent takedown I've ever read. Like on one hand she's like yeah I see you trying to promote a strain of feminism through the backdrop of this era but in so doing you're just perpetuating the bullshit you think you're trying to work against, and before you go off on some bullshit about how you're more of an expert on the era because you've spent however many years studying it, let me just tell you how your own cultural bias has rosed over the obvious, then she's like but i get it chile you're just having your fun so go on do you m but don't think I didn't just check you like no one else has done yet.

LMAO!!

Gonna go cop the Inheritance Trilogy now.

(yeah i been saying i been gonna do it this whole thread, but i swear they never have her shit in on the shelves so imma just do the amazon thing now)

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."