REVIEWED BY J.S.

Genre: fantasy (unclassified)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis bisexual

Warnings: racism, sexism, rape not advancing the plot, rape turning a woman gay

Rating: two stars

Review

The story of an allo cis het white guy on a ship, fighting to instill 'Merican values on Bronze Age savages--except for the blonde ones from England.

Oh, wait, no. That's the cover.

This is actually the story of a black bisexual woman on a ship...fighting to instill 'Merican values on Bronze Age savages, but falling in love with one of the less-savage blonde ones. That's marginally better, or at least it would be if the protagonist had been written with less emphasis on how incredibly black she was.

The Plot

Nantucket Island (which, to be fair, is really moderate-liberal white) is, for an unexplained reason, plucked from reality and dropped into the Bronze Age. Same place, just different year. The inhabitants must figure out how to feed themselves, which involves figuring out how to trade with the humans around them. They have +10 in nice ships, everyone seems to have a Japan fetish (katana! but also they never think of going to Japan...), and the usual number of people who want to rape and plunder.

The Good

It was a very immersive world. I loved the discussions of the technology and how it needed to be adapted, and loved the ideaof first contact scenarios. The struggles on Nantucket between the islanders were some of the most compelling scenes, as the group worked on the hows and whys of their isolation, and how best to survive.

Noting the white guy on the cover, I was more than a little surprised to find this had a black woman lead, and that she got not only a romance line, but it was with another woman. The romance was sweet, with a good amount of sexual tension, and the sex scenes were tastefully done (sadly, not too explicit, but I'd never be mad at a book for that). So in terms of the f/f romance line, this book can have 5 stars. Pro tip though: the only people who get to write about Lesbian Bed Death are lesbians. Fight me.

The Bad

Can we just stop with the rape as a common place tool trope? Please? Nantucket Island was transported back into the Bronze Age. My suspension of disbelief is already waaaay beyond my comfort zone. Would taking a look back in time to see that oh, rape was actually not as common place as everyone thought (which is increasingly being found to be true) be so hard? If you must have rape, does it need to be titillating? (Hint: the answer is no.)

Also, you know what is bullshit? Raping a woman and then having her turn to women. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. If every raped woman became a lesbian, well, this world would look a lot different. Being raped doesn't make you gay. Period. Being gay makes you gay.

The Ugly

It simply is not necessary to point out the otherness of people every chance you get. Yes, we know the main character is black. Constant discussion of how she was hard to see at night, or her black arms reaching for something, or her nappy hair (really??) just further serve the white default narrative. The only Asian character is a sado-masochist (and not in the fun 'we use safe words' way), and the only other black character is a caricature. The two Jewish people end up together. The two bisexual women end up together. Gay men apparently do not exist, nor does anyone outside the gender binary. With the sheer volume of people we meet in this book, that's really impressive, especially noting that the cultures do not seem even remotely upset by the f/f relationship. If it's common enough to be NBD, where are the other queers?

This book actually reminds me of any number of the feminist utopia books from the 1970s and 1960s. It (and they) read as one person's myopic view of a perfect future (or past), not giving any thought to intersectionality of identities, nor of marginalized voices. How progressive, to have a land only with women (for the feminist utopias of only white women who are all straight and cis)! How progressive, to have a black lesbian as a lead (in a book that uses the word savages to discuss basically every non-white culture)!
It's not that I don't appreciate the attempt, but with the amount of reading and researching that likely went into this book to get the ship lingo, navigation, and Bronze Age cultures at least somewhat technically accurate, you'd think a few sociological texts could have been consulted as well. Presenting Native American peoples as wife-beaters and/or cannibals and human sacrificers, Egyptians as nothing more than slavers, ignoring every Asian culture as not developed enough to worry about, while spending time with white Bronze Age cultures that seem rustic, but oh look, they're actually really intelligent--is absolute horse shit. And the more 'rustic' of the British tribes, the ones who aren't intelligent enough to work with, get called white Apache because they are so savage.

This book was written in 1998, btw.

I really wanted to like this book, and it had some strong worldbuilding, but the racism, especially, was absolutely appalling. If you want to give it a go for the generally good romance line, or just to see a black woman kicking ass (but being reminded she is OMG BLACK all the time), then maybe hunt this one up at a used bookstore. Spoiler: the black lady lead never makes the cover on any of the trilogy books. No surprise there.
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I refuse to provide buy links for this book. Those who read George R.R. Martin's books will also likely love this series for the striking white savior / brown skinned people are savages parallels.

Genre: Horror/Post-Apocalyptic

Pairings: N/A

Queer Rep: Bisexuality

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence,  discussion of self-harm, suicidal ideation, emetophobia, domestic violence, pregnancy, childbirth, and gore.
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REVIEWED BY L.A. ASHTON

M. Rose Flores’ official Facebook is here, and her twitter is over this way.

Note: I am an Amazon Associate and I am using affiliate links. These do not affect you or my reviews.

From Ninestar Press:
The End (ebook) — $6.49
From Amazon.com:
The End (print) — $15.99    |    The End (ebook) — $6.49



[Note: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.]

Synopsis

Being a teenager is rough. Being a queer teenager? Moreso. And being a queer teenager during the zombie apocalypse, well... at least it can’t get any worse.

Cate’s life takes a cataclysmic turn on her seventeenth birthday. Now living in a world where the dead live and the living have lost their humanity, Cate and her sister struggle to survive. As if suddenly having to acclimate to zombies being a real thing isn’t bad enough, Cate soon discovers that not all zombies are as simple as they seem, and she just so happens to be immune to their virus.
General
“The End” is a book with a strong voice and a focused plot. If you’re itching for a zombie thriller, the biggest strength of this novel is that it’s everything you expect it to be. Unfortunately, its biggest weakness is that it’s everything you expect it to be.

Plot

My first few moments with The End had me jumping back to the book’s listing to check for a Young Adult tag. The End is not shelved as a young adult novel, and I honestly believe that was an error on the press’s part. The age of the characters notwithstanding, the narrative is highly colloquial and felt geared toward a younger reader. Or, at the very least, for someone looking to read YA.

The book is told on two timelines: “THEN” and “NOW”. This works well for the piece, and helps give the reader momentum. It was a saving grace at times, as the catch 22 for this novel becomes apparent very early: this book will give you the zombie story you think you want, but it will almost never surprise you.

We’ve seen zombie stories plenty: The Walking Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Day of the Living Dead... you get the picture. We know the rhythm and tropes by now. This novel follows them almost to a T, which made some of it fall just this side of boring. I could guess how things would play out, what would be introduced next, etc. Unfortunately, the hook the author promises in the synopsis—zombies who aren’t “just zombies”, and an immune MC—makes almost no impact on the narrative. Yeah, fighting the abnormal zombies is a bit rough, but they don’t do anything truly jarring or horrifying, and you never find out the how or the why behind them. For the most part, there’s not even speculation. Cate and her comrades handle them the way they handle all the rest, and they move on. I wanted something creepier, or something with more narrative weight, and all I got were some zombies that could run.
On the other foot, I’m a picky jerk about a lot of things, but I’m even more of a picky jerk when it comes to written action. M. Rose Flores is good at action, describing things clearly and succinctly with just enough gross “oomf” when necessary. In general all her descriptions and prose were wonderful. She had a tendency to over-explain things to the reader—obvious things that we could glean from context or would inherently understand—but the cadence and feel of her words was good. If she plays it less safe with her next project, she could hit one out of the park. She just needs to do the weird thing, give us the plot twist we weren’t expecting, and give the middle finger to some of the standard genre tropes.

Setting

The descriptions were good, so the setting was fine. We’re given the rundown towns and cities you’d expect from a zombie apocalypse. I actually wish the characters would have spent more narrative time in one place so we could have explored these places more; it was difficult to get attached to places and people when Cate and Melody moved at such a break-neck pace.

Characters

Cate is a cool kid. You get a sense of her character right away from the narrative style, and it sticks with you. She is just a kid though, and I sometimes had to remind myself of this when she did something stupid. Would teenage me have been smart enough to know better? Maybe, but maybe not. She also deals with real problems that make real sense given her current (awful) circumstances, and I liked seeing a proper portrayal of the mental strains a person would face.
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I really liked Marco. I eventually grew attached to Calvin as well, but some of the more superfluous characters (especially toward the end) didn’t really stick with me, which made the climax less impactful.
 
I think if you’re looking for a YA zombie narrative, The End is for you. If you want something that’s gonna knock your pants off with new ideas, it’s not for you. If you just want to chill alongside some dudes while they cleave into zombie heads, dig in! Despite my very par feelings about this particular novel, I look forward to what else Flores will bring to the world.

RATING: 3 Stars

QUEER REP:  Pansexual (all of the Asgard), Bisexual (maybe?)

PAIRINGS: F/F, M/F

REVIEWED BY: Rebecca

WARNINGS: A lot of fighting/violence

The Valkyrie Kara stood alone against the Ragnarok horde on Earth to ensure that the Asgard race and Valhalla could escape. For five thousand years she has fought and evaded the Ragnarok race on Earth, just waiting for her people to return.








REVIEW

This was difficult to rate. During some parts, I wanted to give it four stars, during others, I wanted to give it 1 or 2. Sometimes, a rating is fairly arbitrary, and that may be the case here. In the end, I think this book is a film in disguise. It's a movie, trying to be a novel, full of action, lightning spears, cheesy flirtations, tight-fitting armour, and repetitive dialogue. That said, I can still understand why it's so popular.

The concept of using Norse mythology as the basis of a female-led action sci-fi sounds wonderful, and it almost works. Kara had me quite interested for the first few chapters, and the creativity behind some of her weaponry was quite interesting. I can definitely say I've never read another story with the nano-lattice concept and it was definitely cool.

The issues with the book, however, started to compound the further I read. Kate and Kara experience the epitome of insta-love. It's hard to understand any movement of time in the story, but the two women seem to know each other for less than a day before they've all but decided to spend the rest of their lives together. Kate also seems to have no real friends or family, no qualms at all about the thought of leaving her entire life behind in order to be the new "Daughter of Odin" as Kara's mate (a word that I was really tired of by the end). 

The main thing that had me gritting my teeth by the end of the novel was the repetition. The phrase "Well met, Valkyrie" is used so many times that I couldn't stand it anymore. The constant use of full titles when the Asgard spoke to each other also become cumbersome, such as "Kate the Raging Storm, Daughter of Odin and mate to Kara the Wild One" or even the shorter versions such as "Areena the Whispering Breeze, Second to Kate the Raging Storm". I appreciate the need for cultural differences between humans and Asgard, but it became frustrating overkill within two chapters of Valhalla's return.

The book is heavy on action, and I couldn't help but picture Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld series for a huge portion of the story. The writer clearly has a talent for fast-paced fight scenes and, to be fair, those who read my reviews know that this probably makes me the wrong reader for the book.

I felt somewhat disconnected from the characters during these fight scenes though, as their wounds and manoeuvres were always just listed, never really described, never explored in a way as to show how they felt, even though it's written in first person. Someone is stabbed in the chest from behind, and barely reacts, and doesn't seem to feel a thing. The constant mention of "fighting with valour" became a distraction from Kara and Kate themselves, like they only did what they did because, as they say over and over (and over and over) again "we are Valkyrie", as though that's an explanation on its own.

It's an interesting novel. And if you're like me and just adore any connection to the ancient world and/or mythology, then it's worth having a look at. If you enjoy action from nearly start-to-finish, then this is certainly a book for you! Just be prepared for certain plot points to be re-hashed several times, along with a fair amount of repetitive language use. I don't regret reading this one, it was entertaining overall, but I don't think I'll be picking up any others in the series, as much as I desperately love the overall concept.

*NOTE: Apparently there's a comic book adaption, and this could be something worth exploring!