Daughter of Smoke and What? (Review of Daughter of Smoke and Bone) (****MAJOR SPOILERS****)

Plot

Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student at a school in Prague. She was raised from birth by chimaeras, creatures whose bodies are comprised of different animal and sometimes human features. The chimaera who raised her ask for teeth in exchange for wishes, and send Karou to fetch said teeth for them. In the beginning, Karou has yet to discover what the teeth are used for and why there are rules about what kinds of teeth she can collect (such as "no baby teeth" and "no rotting"). While on one of these missions, Karou meets Akiva, an angel, and her world is turned even more upside down than it already is.

Characters

The big question is: is this a feminist novel? The short answer is no; at least, not in comparison to works like Beauty Queens or Tamora Pierce's books. It certainly has the potential to be feminist, and the premise is exciting, but Taylor falls flat as she gets into the story. One of the most prominent topics in the novel is beauty—more specifically, how beautiful Karou and Akiva are (as well as Karou's best friend, Zusana).

Every important person in this novel is presented as being jaw-droppingly beautiful. I would usually have no issue with this, because I have no issue with attractive characters, but they're all traditionally beautiful. Karou is a tiny-waisted, bird-like girl with long blue hair, Zusana is a four-foot-tall manic pixie dream girl, Kaz is a creepier version of Edward Cullen, and Akiva is literally an angel (with eyes that, as we are told constantly, are exactly like a tiger's).

All of the characters in the novel are also white, which is problematic in its own right.

Karou in particular is a definitive Mary Sue. She's amazing at anything to do with art, dancing and writing, not to mention her prowess at fighting. Her character development is minimal at best, and all of it revolves around her relationship with Akiva.

Akiva's personality is comprised of three factors: he's a seraph, he's ridiculously beautiful, and he is full of RAGING angst. Most of this angst is due to how he's killed countless chimaera and was forced to watch his One True Love, Madrigal, die.

Zusana is the sassy short pixie friend who wants to be a puppeteer. She's repeatedly described as being doll-like but terrifying (she's also the Threatening Short Friend™). This, it would seem, is her only defining characteristic.

Kaz is mentioned frequently at the beginning of the novel, but is ultimately an unimportant character who does nothing to further the plot. He could have been left out of the book entirely and it wouldn't have affected anything.

Madrigal is, without a doubt, the only good character in the novel, which is strange, since she and Karou are supposed to be the same person (Karou is the human reincarnation of Madrigal). She is a chimaera who saves Akiva's life after he's been left to die on the battlefield. Two years later, they meet again and fall in love. While she is my favorite character, Madrigal still isn't a great one. She's naïve, overly trusting, and is supposed to be the character who looks down with condescension on the primitive ways of her kind (which is frustrating, to say the least).

Story

The story is told reasonably well, but it's not a well-written book. The language is flowery, the dialogue is unrealistic, and all of the characters are flat. While the wishes are an interesting concept (as well as the fact that the cost for them was pain), they weren't explored to the degree that I would have liked. I wish that the romance had been left out in lieu of more plot devoted to the wishes. 

I also find it strange that the chimaera, the majority of which have animal heads as opposed to human heads, have the same beauty standards as humans. They also hold archaic views of “purity”--once a chimaera has died and been reborn, they have "hamsas"- an eye tattoos on the middle of their hands. A chimaera without these tattoos is considered “pure”, which is a (preposterous) concept similar to that of virginity.

Once Madrigal is reincarnated into Karou, she has hamsas, which turn out to be super handy when fighting angels. They're conveniently magic, and she accidentally uses them against Akiva several times. 

While Madrigal and Akiva work fairly well together, the romance between Karou and Akiva seems unnecessary and forced, even though she is supposed to be Madrigal reincarnate. There's also the age difference—he's fifty and she's seventeen—although this seems to slip both their minds, as angels age far slower than humans, making him appear much younger than he is. It would have been better without the element of romance, and if Taylor had stuck to telling us Karou's journey to find her family and herself, rather than falling in love with and becoming dependent on Akiva.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone had the potential to be a well-written feminist novel, but Taylor's undeveloped, flat characters and poorly executed plot caused it to fall short.

-Bucky

13 Reasons Why I Hated this Book (Review of 13 Reasons Why)

Plot

Clay Jensen, a high school student, comes home one afternoon and finds a package sitting at his door. Upon opening it, he finds it is a shoebox filled with 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah, a girl at his school who has recently committed suicide. The tapes were being mailed to one classmate and once they finished listening, they were to mail the tapes to the next classmate on the list. Hannah has a second set of tapes with someone else, who will leak the tapes to the entire school if a person does not pass them on.

Clay listens to the tapes in which Hannah details all of her pain and suffering and where her life has went wrong, and how this relates to the person who has been given the tapes. Each person who has been given the tapes has supposedly played a role in Hannah's destruction and by giving them the tapes, it is Hannah's last way to tell her story.

My Thoughts
Here are 13 reasons why this book is truly not as wonderful and gripping as everybody seems to think it is:

1. We are not given any hint that Hannah did not pop out of the ground fully grown, because Hannah's parents are never shown. At least, Hannah's relationship with her parents is never shown. While this is a trope commonly present in YA fiction, she doesn't even remotely seem to think of them or what her actions will do to them before she commits suicide.

2. Clay doesn't really have much of a personality. You can tell he is just a vehicle for us (the audience) to listen to these tapes. He doesn't have any character.

3. I couldn't connect the dots. I don't get how Hannah got from point A to point B. I thought it would all come together in the end and make sense, but it didn't. It was only a loose string of events that Hannah was desperately trying to string together.

4. The suspense is non-existent. I didn't have a burning need to get to the end, which is what the author is going for.

5. None of the people on the list seem to get much retribution for their actions--even the ones who actually committed crimes.

6. This isn't a realistic portrayal of depression and suicidal thoughts. Hannah says she's only depressed because people were mean to her, while in reality, even situational depression is a legitimate mental health issue.

7. In relation to the number above, this book wasn't researched properly. I don't think he took the time to get different portrayals of depression and suicide victims and truly get all sides of the story. Asher just took every broken bird trope he could find and applied it to Hannah.

8. I couldn't connect to Hannah--she was made out to be a sympathetic character, but was actually aggravating.

9. Most of the main characters were flat and unemotional. Specifically, many of the female characters weren't fleshed out. While the male characters were sort of deep (the story is narrated by Clay, a responsible, straight-laced yet sensitive guy), no one in this book was given much of a personality, and the female characters fared the worst. I can't even remember any female characters' names apart from Hannah.

11. There were plot holes. Specifically, the parts in the coffee shop were vague and unconnected to the total plot.

12. Hannah has scarred the lives of 13 teenagers as "revenge". She foists incredible amounts of guilt onto these people and I doubt they will be getting over this soon; most of them feel miserable and guilty. They will forever regret being the cause of death for a sensitive teenage girl.

13. Remember when I said I had thirteen reasons for why I hated this book?
I lied.

This last point is going to be about what this book could have accomplished, in the hands of a more skilled author. The theme of this book was that words and actions, which may seem small and inconsequential, can ruin a person's life. Hannah was slut-shamed into despair. All it took was one lie about her doing something with one guy and it spiraled into Hannah being turned into the school's resident "ho". This is something that plagues girls and women everywhere. We are not allowed to be sexually free beings. Not only that, but if there's even word of us being sexually free beings, we are shamed to no end. There's always a fear there.

I can see what Jay Asher was trying to do. He had an essentially good premise, but it didn't work. He jsut seemed to have a fundamental misunderstanding of depression and suicide, and other mental health-related issues. Hannah had the potential to be a strong vehicle for a stand against slut-shaming and how it goes and in hand with the bullying many teen girls face. A few kids talked about Hannah and called her a mean name, and it ended her world. That isn't believable. She accuses people of not seeing or understanding her, yet doesn't even try to get people to help before deciding they don't care. She plays the victim throughout the novel while doing some of the exact same things she accuses others of. Hannah doesn't realize that she is the one who took those pills. She is the one who chose to end it all. She never puts the blame on herself, instead handing it off to everybody else. Asher, instead of placing the blame on the system that made Hannah's suicide possible, places it on random characters in order to make Hannah more sympathetic. Thirteen Reasons Why is full of wasted potential.

-Lynette

Constantine's Liv: Mary Sue?

"Mary Sue"

A character too perfect for their setting. Most often, this character is talented and attractive, and anyone who doesn't adore them is portrayed as mean, stupid, or evil. It's common for them to be the smartest, even if this requires everyone else to act stupider than they should. Out of place but awesome names are also frequent occurrences. They lead charmed lives, and any conflict or drama they are met with will be either overdone to the point of headache induction, or easily brushed aside.

source: urbandictionary.com

So when I read the basic plot for the new CW show, Constantine, I cringed. It was about a man named John Constantine, who protected Liv, the daughter of an old friend, as she figured out her powers and the world of the supernatural.

It's not a horrible plot, definitely not the worst I have ever heard, but pause for a moment. Does anyone else get the feeling that this show will basically be about this rugged, older man protecting this young, helpless and frail girl? Honestly, that's the only feeling I get, and I do not like it at all.

For the most part, in our society, girls play this role. They're the damsel in distress, the helpless one. The man sweeps in and saves her, and they live happily ever after. Right? Wrong.

What troubles me is that Liv actually does have the potential to be a good character. Perhaps not the most likable, but I think she'd do well on the show. The entire "girl is thrust into new world, has to adapt" premise is good with me, it's just the fact that they made Liv seem like a helpless little girl that I don't like.

A lot of girls in television and movies are portrayed like this. They have no real character, no motivations of their own, and no faults. Girls in real life aren't like that at all. It just gets me wondering why writers would still insist on portraying girls, who obviously could be alright if a few tweaks were made to their character, like this.

Either way, they thankfully changed the plot of the show. It now features a woman named Zed, who is supposed to basically fill the "femme fatale" role, as I take it. In the actual comics, she was a woman who possessed several psychic powers. She and Constantine had a romantic thing going on, which makes also me wonder. Did they change the plot because they wanted romantic tension in the first season, but couldn't do it with Liv without freaking the audience out?

I'll leave you with that question. In the end though, I'm glad they made the decision to change it, although I do hope they eventually bring Liv back into the plot. The key to Liv is starting her out as a Mary-Sue (because they can't change the character too much from the comic book), then making her a stronger, rougher person due to her experiences.

-Luce

On Femilit Articles

Hi, everyone. So, as you know, Femilit is primarily a book blog. However, we do try to have broad enough horizons to not stay 100% in that genre, and we feel that it's sometimes necessary to make our readers aware of the feminist news in the world and media today, even that outside of literature. We'll feature issues that we, as feminists ourselves, believe are important, and do our best to inform on them in interesting and unique ways. Hence the new series: Articles By Luce, which, written by our lovely admin Luce, will be published on the blog every so often along with reviews. We hope you enjoy them!

Review of Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray (originally posted on Fab-fem.edu)

Hey, everyone. Recently, I joined a feminist “Girl Power Book Club” at my neighborhood bookstore. It is one of the most awesome things I have ever had the good fortune to be a part of. I thought a good first review would be of one of the books that we read there. 

The first book we read was Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray. Before I launch into it, I want to say that I’m glad that this was the first book, because, as one of my all-time favorite novels, it makes an amazing example of a YA book done right. Beauty Queens embraces the best ideals of feminism, and actually helps and supports teenage girls. I’m glad to have the opportunity to make it the first blog post, because it give me hope, both in it’s message and it’s existence. You’ll find this to be a pretty positive review. 

The premise of Beauty Queens is this: A group of “Miss Teen Dream” pageant runner-ups crash in a plane onto a deserted island, instilling a Lord of the Flies-esque situation. However, rather than a bunch of boys, you’ve got thirteen BAMF teenage girls running amok on the island, trying their best to survive. I can say without a doubt that it is one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read. I’m not saying that it’s going to be a classic; I’m not saying that it’s beautifully written or brings tears to your eyes. Someone who isn’t a regular of YA literature might never even see the appeal. But this book gives the reader nine amazing female protagonists: real teenage girls with incredible personalities, all of whom I connected with on a deep personal level.

I will admit that I was ambivalent at the beginning of the book. The cover itself puts people off- the torso of a bikini clad girl, with lipstick lined up on a belt that would traditionally contain bullets. This, of course, is exactly what a feminist book club should be trying to avoid: books about faceless conventional beauties. 
But Beauty Queens isn’t like that at all. The surprise that comes with discovering each girl’s individuality is one of the most important aspects of the book.

Beauty Queens is a parody, a satirical narrative of American pop-culture and beauty standards. Because of this, at the beginning of the book, each girl seems as thoughtless and inanely giggly as the next. Which is something that most people would find it hugely entertaining, yet something that a big group of hardcore third-wave feminists like my book club would generally feel deeply insulted by. It’s probably a good thing that the book didn’t continue like that. At all. 

When you begin the book, it seems to be making fun of the pageant girls. This is partly due to the MC. Adina is the Miss New-Hampshire of the pageant, and, at the beginning, seems to be the only one with her priorities straight. 

Adina is not in the pageant to win- she thinks it’s complete bullshit, and is there to expose it. She plays in an all girl punk band, likes poetry, and wants to be a journalist. 
The culture of objectifying teenage girls isn’t something that appeals to her. 

As the book goes on, Adina sinks from being your favorite character into the background. As the other girls develop, you see that she was wrong about them. 
And you were, too. 

There’s a decent level of diversity in the book. Of the nine girls that are developed throughout the story, there are two WoC, a transgender girl, and a disabled girl. They aren’t the traditional American beauties. Kudos to Libba Bray for that. 

Even more importantly, each girl is a complete individual. They aren’t just caricatures, they are characters.

As the girls get to know each other, they slowly shed their previous prejudices and their own facades. Being alone on the island does not hurt them- it helps them. Over the course of the book each girl has (whether involving quicksand, sexy eco-warriors, or giant snakes), a glorious moment of self discovery. 
And this self discovery isn’t something that they regret. They even talk about it at one point: 

“Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one’s watching them so they can be who they really are.”

As the girl become friends, they realize things about themselves and the world around them. They come to talk about what life is like as a teenage girl in America, and some of what they come up with I had never even thought of before. Their conclusions are painfully true. 

One of the best scenes in the book is one of these realizations. One of the girls begins talking, and after a short monologue, apologizes for sharing her opinion. The response that she receives is one of the best quotes I’ve ever discovered. 

“Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world? Have you ever noticed that? [...] You go on websites and some girl leaves a post and if it’s longer than three sentences or she’s expressing her thoughts about some topic, she usually ends with, ‘Sorry for the rant’ or ‘That may be dumb, but that’s what I think.” 

I sat in shock for several minutes after reading this, because guess what? It’s true. I myself am often guilty of apologizing at the end of rants. Why do I do that? I’m not sorry at all! I feel strongly about my opinion, so I’m going to share it. Boys don’t do this. In class discussions at my school, all the girls will apologize after sharing how they feel, and the boys will go on and on. This is because we seem to think that girls shouldn’t have opinions. That they should always be sorry if they ever think outside the box. I think this line (as well as this entire book) is Libba Bray’s way of saying “Fuck You” to the system.

The girls decide to make an oath to stop saying sorry. 

These aren’t just random realizations. They all add up to one ginormous fact: It’s fucking hard to be a woman in today’s society, and it’s even harder to be a teenage girl. 

Beauty Queens isn’t about them abandoning girlhood, however. It’s not about them becoming rebels like Adina (although some do) and hating all that is girly. Because these are America’s beauty queens, and they will embrace their femininity in any situation. 

This book is about them learning how. 

This is about women taking control of their sexualities and their identities, and about them fucking up society using just what society has given them. Quite literally, by the end of it. 

“You want to know what pain is? Try running out of Advil when you’ve got a Category Five period. I’ve had cramps that would make grown men beg for a bullet between the eyes.” 

This is a quote spoken by Jennifer; one of the main characters while… well, I don’t want to give too much away. But surprising turns of events include piranha tanks, insane foreign dictators that dress like Elvis Presley, and cross-dressing reality TV show pirates. 

Previously, I called Beauty Queens a parody. But it’s also It’s more than that. It’s also an anthem for modern girls all over. 

Beauty Queens is a parody, but you’re not laughing at the girls- you’re laughing with them. And shouting with them, and smiling with them, and crying with them. 

Beauty Queens is a truly unbelievable book, and as a teenage girl, I found it more empowering than anything I’d ever read. So if you happen to be a teenage girl, (whether you identify as a feminist or not), I think you should read it. In fact, no matter what sort of human being you are, I think you should read it. Because this book is revolutionary. 

Libba Bray is moving mountains.

-Razi

A Short Introduction

First of all, thanks for visiting our blog! We really appreciate it. Before you go any further, we thought that an introduction was in order. For individual bios, go here.

Femilit is, first and foremost, a book blog. The five of us--Leon, Luce, Lynette, Bucky, and Razi--initially met as separate users on the literary website Figment. All of us are aspiring writers and huge book lovers.

We are also all adamant feminists, and greatly concerned with the lack of gender (as well as sexual and racial), diversity in literature and in the media. There is a whole world of books out there, and it seems ridiculous to us, and to many others, that those books shouldn't be used to promote good values, and show a variety of interesting and diverse characters. Books are incredible, but why are strong, interesting women so often absent from them? It isn't right, and it isn't fair.

We have created this blog as a sort of safe space for feminist readers and writers to congregate and share their views and ideas. In our reviews, we hope to call out poor representation of women in literature, as well as to acknowledge and praise those books that are doing it right! Along with reviews, we'll hopefully be posting book recs, writing samples, and a variety of other things. We are always open to new idea, so if you want to contribute something, or share your opinion on our blog, feel free to contact us at femilit@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!