I don’t know how I got roped into this, but it appears I’m
reading more P.C. Cast. I blame Cynna, Olivia, Maverynthia and Paige for my pain and suffering. I will be
joining them on the Papercuts Podcast
to discuss this atrocity we have all endured.
Because this book is just so very… typical.
It was utterly awful in several ways.
I think to understand a lot of the PROBLEMATIC awful
elements of this book as opposed to the awful WRITING elements of this book and
the awful CHARACTER elements of this book it is necessary to look at how this
book treats race
A very very very very simplistic reading of this book
would suggest there are no POC in this book – but I think that’s largely
because an editor (yes, I actually believe this book may have gone near an
editor despite all evidence to this contrary) looked at this and said “you’re
going to make them POC? Nooooo, stop this Save the Pearls awful!”. This means
the book is very very very very careful not to outright label skin colour of
anyone. There’s one reference to Earth Walker skin colour:
“The dirty, earthy colour of all Scratchers”
Which pretty much makes their dark skin confirmed in the
most utterly racist way possible.
Even if it were ambiguous and it is rarely mentioned, that
doesn’t mean the racialisation of the Earth Walkers and the Tree Tribe aren’t
clear. The physical descriptions have several markers – the Earth Walkers have
black, coarse hair, broad noses; the Tree Tribe has blond hair, small noses.
And these are just some examples – Mari spends most of the book hiding her
mixed race identity using dark hair dye and darkening her skin and disguising
her features with mud – which screams darkening her skin. Sure she could be
disguising herself by being the person who is literally and clearly blathered
in mud all the time
But… really? I mean can someone even live like this? She
thinks the tribe ostracises her – but if she is this filthy all the time is it
any surprise everyone backs away from her. Ultimately, another character openly
comments that her skin is a different colour. It’s hard to avoid the idea that
the Earth Walkers are not a POC analogue even if not POC themselves
And we know that with some extra really problematic
tropes that have been dropped on them. The Earth Walkers are cursed – at night
if they are not “washed” in moonlight the women become passive, despairing,
depressed and suicidal while the man become animalistic, violent, savage
rapists. So much so that even washed they cannot live with their wives and
daughters because big angry rapey men – with POC coding this isn’t just
problematic, this is disgustingly racist. Seeing this the Tree Tribe kills the
animalistic men and enslaves the women – assuming they’re helpless, pathetic,
incapable of helping themselves and the good noble tree tribe HAS to enslave
them for THEIR OWN GOOD
Seriously, this white saviour narrative is so strong
Cecil Rhodes would ask you to steady on a little. Not only are these magical
slave/slaughter traits disgusting in and of themselves, but they’re also used
as redemption for the Tree Tribe’s slavery. One thing this book does manage is
to make it clear that enslaving the Earth Walkers is wrong – but this narrative
of woo-woo JUSTIFIES them, it absolves them. They’re not evil, they just didn’t
understand that this entire race of people they were murdering didn’t want to
be murdered and enslaved. They’re killing them FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.
The woo-woo which causes the POC to rape and be enslaved
is an appalling, insurmountable part of this book which pollutes my tablet with
its presence. But it’s not the only issue – the way the Earth Walkers (coded
POC) and the Tree Tribe (coded white) are described is utterly awful. The Earth
Walkers are ugly – coarse, rough featured, plain; while the Tree Tribe are “refined”.
This is the objective description of the two people – the beautiful blonds and
the ugly, coarse POC who are rapists and enslaved.
This is awful – and a lot of this awful comes from Mari,
our protagonist. Oh how I hate her. The only reason she isn’t the most hate of
protagonists is because The House
of Night and the hot mess of Zoey exists and give this heap of wasted
trees 12 books I’m sure I’ll loathe Mari as muchl
Mari is half tree tribe, half Earth Walker. She was
raised by her mother, Leda, an Earth Walker. She has never ever met her father
who died when she was born. She doesn’t seem to have ever met a member of the Tree
Tribe before this book. She knows of them only as brutal slavers and the
heritage which forces her to hide inside and plaster herself in blackface
mud. She is not as product of Tree Tribe culture at all
So why does SHE think the Earth Walkers are all the ugliest, coarse plainness while the Tree Tribes are so pretty? Where has she even got this beauty standard from? Who taught her to call her OWN MOTHER ugly while putting the murdering tree people on a pedestal of blond, green eyed beauty? How does someone grow up, ostracised in a society, having to hide their features and decide EVERYONE in that society is grossly ugly except her precious self? I don’t care what kind of self-confidence you have, this is not how things work, even if you are so self-centred small planets should orbit you?!
Any my gods is she self-centred and hateful. Especially to
her OWN people, the people who raised her, her mother’s people. She refers to
the Earth Walkers as “Scratchers”, a slur the Tree Tribe uses to denigrate the
Earth Walkers… how does she even KNOW this word? She has no exposure to Tree
Tribe culture, so how has she heard their slurs? And why, good gods, why, is
she using it all the damn time? Why has she absorbed this level of contempt for
her own people that she psychically learns insults about them?!
More, when her people need her to “wash” them so the
women don’t fall to depression and die and the men don’t become violent
rapists, she REFUSES. She decides that her people don’t deserve her help and
she’s just going to leave them all to rape and murder and die. She hates them
that much… yet this is the same book that, when she finds Nik, a Tree Tribe,
one of the people who literally enslave and murder her people… and suddenly she’s
a sweet angel of mercy determined to preserve this poor slaver’s life.
Why does she hate her people so much? It’s never really
explained. She’s even shocked that any Earth Walker other than her can actually
produce art. She hid her heritage from them constantly assuming they’d hate her
but we have seen no evidence of this. Literally every single Earth Walker who
has learned she is half-tree tribe has accepted her without reservation. At
very least one scene where Mari realises “hey, my assumption my people would
hate me is perhaps unfounded and maybe I shouldn’t loathe them all” would be
nice!
Also, there’s Sora. Mari hates her and she’s a terrible
person. How do we know? Because female and DARES TO LOOK AT MEN how dare she,
the sluthussyjezebel. Because everyone knows in P.C. Cast’s world any sexual
woman is made of evil. She’s only redeemed when she crawls and begs Mari for
help and acknowledges Mari as her superior (and can we talk about how Mari
decided she was totally entitled to inherit the leadership of her clan when she
spent her entire life cowering at home caked in mud?)
This covers a lot of the awful of the book – but I really
have to cover that this book is some of the most terrible writing outside of a House of Night book. This book is long.
So very long. But looking back on it there just isn’t nearly enough story to
justify this many dead trees (thankfully my copy is not paper). It just rambles
on repetitively over and over and over again with lots of really convoluted
world building. We open this boring book with a dreadfully ridiculous info dump
where Mari and Leda, her mother, describe how their people pick names. No,
really. They just sit down and decide “hey let us discuss naming conventions
because why not!” The whole beginning of the book is filled with the most
splurged info dumps – the whole conversation between Mari and Leda nearly made
me put the book down. We have a separated interlude where we talk about Purple
Kale
Purple Kale
No-one cares about your kale
No-one in the history of mankind has ever cared about
kale
Caring about kale is the sign of a deeply damaged soul.
We even have a scene where she does the “I describe
myself in the mirror” scene. She even infodumps, aloud, to herself WHILE SHE’S
ALL ALONE. Seriously, she’s alone, alone and she’s still monologuing to
herself.
This continues the whole book, people will just drop vast
chunks of what I will dubiously call world building about the tree dwelling dog
people (don’t even get me started – no wait, I will start because it’s classic
Cast bullshit. For some reason questioning why someone’s skill, talents and
contribution to the tribe is completely irrelevant if they don’t have the right
kind of pet is deeply wrong – so only deeply wrong people do this. This is
utterly terrible writing – if people can’t disagree with your character/world
building/whatever unless they are proven objectively wrong them your writing is
lazy. People can disagree with political systems legitimately. And, no,
disagreeing that your skills should be discounted because you don’t have a dog
is not unreasonable! It’s terrible that we never actually explore these points
or the potential of them because Wrong People Wanting Wrong Things is Wrong
Guys!!!)
Sorry, this is the kind of book where random frustrated
tangents are demanded frequently. Speaking of – the poetry. Whyyyy is there
poetry. They’re “warning rhymes” to help people remember… really?
“Fear Canines – flee felines – take to the ground or you
will be found”
This is not only objectively terrible, who the hell needs
a mnemonic to hide from danger!? Especially when you live in caves in the
ground IN ORDER TO HIDE?
“Be safe! Concentrate! Where old logs lie there are
dangers to spy! Always prepare to beware!”
Seriously if this is how you’re teaching your children
you need to be convicted of child abuse. These are not hard warnings to teach
the next generation. Prepare to beware? I take it back, no way an editor read
this book – or if they did they’re now a broken, desperate person who no longer
believes goodness or joy exist.0
“Of Cities beware – skin stealers are there.”
Do I have to talk about the Skin Stealers? The evil evil
people of evilness who are evil? (we know they’re evil because they opening
scene involves sex and only evil people have sex). Honestly they serve no
purpose at all in this book except to interrupt our regular scheduled awful
with more awful. In a book that is already too long, already full of
irrelevant, having some extra irrelevant scenes just makes it drag on even
longer and more painfully. Save it for the second book.
Oh gods there’s going to be a second book.
For more diversity we have a gay minor character whose
relationship is mentioned once and is pretty obscure and 2 lesbians. One of
which dies. Of course she does. At least it’s a mercy killing because she won’t
be in this book any more.
I am not looking forward to the second book in this
series.
