Hidden Sun, Jaine Fenn
Received to review via Netgalley
Well, thank goodness for other people’s reviews.
I was enjoying reading this, intrigued by the world and rather appreciative of one of the main female characters’ and her drive to understand the world. I can definitely appreciate a scholar! There were a few things that I felt weren’t really set up well enough — rather than feeling like I was understanding the world as I read, I felt like I was missing key pieces of information. It took a long time to understand what was going on in terms of skykin/shadowkin, and I’m still not clear (having stopped around 30% of the way through the book) what’s going on with the shadowlands and the skylands.
I was quite prepared to sit tight and keep working through that, but I had a quick Google to see if the description of the book prepared me any better, or anyone’s reviews; maybe someone would say something that would make everything fall into place for me (and make me feel like an idiot).
Instead, I found The Captain‘s review. Thank goodness I did, because I’m fairly sure I would’ve found the described rape scenes upsetting; having skimmed ahead in the book, I know for sure that I find the behaviour of a main character’s brother, and the main character’s reaction to it, disgusting. It turns out, after a long search for him, that Rhia’s brother Etyan was part of gang-raping a girl who he then found dead after going to pay her off for her silence. Rightly fearing what would happen, having found her dead, he ran away. And Rhia decides to forgive him, because although he brutally raped a girl, he didn’t kill her. So she decides to forgive him, because he was just being young and stupid, and at least he wasn’t as bad as she’d feared.
Gag. Spare me. I’ll read something else. Some of the ideas in this book intrigued me, but I’m not going to invest the time for that payoff.
That book would have made me so mad too! That attitude of it being ok to rape if you don’t kill just disgusts me!
Yeppp. I’m sure there are some situations where maybe I could understand a young teenager being confused, and therefore forgivable as long as they understand now that it’s wrong and are clearly never going to do it again; the way this was described was not that.
Ahoy there matey! Glad me review ended up being helpful. I was so close to the end that I did want to finish it. But couldn’t. I personally don’t like readin’ about rape ever but can get past it being used in a book if it furthers the story somehow or is part of a larger dialogue on the subject. But the justification for this one did not float me boat. And I always felt like I was missing key ingredients to the world building as well. And I truly did like Rhia as a character. Arrr!
x The Captain
Yeah, Rhia could have been really fascinating, but argggh, that plot point!