J.L. Worrad

An ARC of this book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Titan for the opportunity to review this book.

Trigger warning I discuss rape in this review. Rape doesn't occur in the book (or at least it didn't by 70%) but the scene I discuss can be extremely triggering. Apologies for the delay in adding this warning.

I DNFed at 70% when I got to a point where I felt like I was a peeping tom in a man's wet dream rather show more than reading a fantasy book with erotic or vulgar elements. The vulgarity was not the issue for me, and you're welcome to check what books I've 4 or 5 starred previously to see the truth of that.

The issue for me is that this was very clearly written by a man, there is a distinct lack of a female voice. That's not to say that men cannot write female characters, nor that they shouldn't try. What I am saying is that Worrad, is specifically bad at it. It also isn’t about femininity, I want to emphasise that. It’s the lack of a woman’s perspective of the world around her and her experiences. When discussing what women of their race are forced to undergo during marriage, the emphasis is on their limited sexual appetite afterward. While Kyra is indeed very driven by sexual impulses, I find it difficult to believe that a female writer would not have commented on the gender inequalities.

This is particular evident in a scene that occurred right before I stopped reading. The females of Kyra's race, the commrach, go into heat at a certain time of the year. During this period they become little better than desperate animals, desperate to touched, to have sex - you get the idea. Even worse, they have this horrible mating call. This mating season doesn't come up once, but twice in the book, because once wasn't enough, apparently. First, it happens to Kyra, and she is tortured by the church to endure it without release.

The scene that takes place at 70% was even worse. The novel alternates between flashbacks between current time on the main land, and Kyra's time on her native Isle. On the Isle during heat groups of young unmarried women are escorted through the city by post-menopausal and asexual guards to attend a play (something to do with their race's traditions). They are not allowed to have release until after the play. So a group of desperate, vulnerable in heat young women are escorted through a city, a city which is teeming with men who react to them in heat and want to rape them. The guards have to actually kill the males to stop them reaching the women.

This isn't vulgarity. It's someone's wet dream, and it's extremely demeaning. I'm pretty sure if this was reversed and men were the ones in heat this wouldn't be about "vulgarity".

Despite having a lesbian protagonist everything in Pennyblade is about sex, but it comes via the male perspective of the author. Kyra’s appetite never feels like it comes from a female one, and I say this as a bi woman, not a straight one. She is constantly thrusting her hips at people... but why? This is a male gesture because men have something to thrust. Yes, women can use strap-ons, however, Kyra never uses one (as of 70% anyway), she has one used on her. Likewise, during a sword fight she holds her rapier up and makes a joke about how "size does matter". Umm.. what? Women don't generally make size jokes (unless we're specifically talking about a man's penis) like that because we don't have anything to measure. The whole concept of measuring is again, a male thought process.

Again, it’s not about femininity, it’s about the male gaze vs the female gaze and I constantly felt like I was reading a male gaze through a female body. Like a male gamer playing a female avatar in a video game. The author tries to bury this feeling in Kyra’s alienness, she’s not human after all. But it fails miserably.

There are also two worrying disability representations in this book. There is a woman, Poppi, with an intellectual disability, who exists just to be physically, emotionally and sexually abused. There's also the sister who has a stutter and suffers from muscle spasms. As I DNFed at 70% I didn't learn her full story, and I didn't want to. She was beginning to be portrayed as a sadistic bigot, and seeing a disabled character portrayed in that way was too much. show less

Pennyblade read like the male version of the current popular subgenre commonly referred to as "romantasy" - a grimdark fantasy with an unlikable lesbian anti-hero that just wants to fuck and fight.

The culture of the main character features an elf-like people with a "progressive, cultured" society that looks down on "savage" human societies while also being so focused on the concept of the perfect specimen and bloodlines *cough*eugenics*cough* with an animalistic season of heat for both the show more men and women. This belief in the perfect specimen is such a focal point of their beliefs that individuals have no personal identity other than to continue the species with the best match which does lend itself to some interesting themes and plot point particularly in the flashback plot line. The current plot line also presents an interesting mystery that was probably the main reason I didn't DNF this book.

Ultimately if you look too closely at the culture Worrad has built it starts to fall apart as a whole. There are certain elements from the characters' plots that also fall apart if you think through them too much. Definitely not the read I was hoping for though it was interesting. show less