[ SECRET POST #5704 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5704 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Yakuza: Like a Dragon]


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[Azure Striker Gunvolt 3]


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[Yurukill: The Calumniation Games]


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[I Am Magicami]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #816 .
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/GwQ8UPb.png

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read it yet because I am super wary. 50% of booktok thinks it's the greatest thing ever and the other 50% says it's terrible and so is the author.

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't read it. It's one of those books where like. People exclusively talk about it as a collection of tropes and vibes that they already like - it's a Cozy Found Family Book! - rather than actual characters or writing details that they enjoyed.

[(Anonymous)]

Multiple secrets have been posted to FS about this book and I was curious, but... yeah, that was my reservation, too. I do love found family as a trope, but if it's not backed up with good writing and plot, I'm probably not going to enjoy it.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a really good point. There's no real characterization, it's just a bunch of tropes and stereotypes, and even if it sounds good on paper, the actual execution falls flat.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the way it uses child separation and institutionalization as a backdrop?
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/03/17/the-big-idea-tj-klune/

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh. That's exactly the kind of "enlightened" privileged white cis male bullshit I can't stand. If I'd read that article ahead of time I most likely wouldn't have read the book.

[sabotabby]

I didn't read it because apparently the author was inspired by an actual genocide and his answer to a very real situation that still impacts Indigenous peoples and nations to this day was "be kind." One of those cases where an author interview makes me nope out of the book before even starting.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh. Like I get how that might seem like a good and smart idea, but... ugh. It just rubs me the wrong way.

[sabotabby]

There have been some excellent fantasy books written inspired by the residential school system—The Marrow Thieves and Hunting By Stars by Cherie Dimaline come immediately to mind. They even have queer found family tropes for people who are into that. There's also The School That Ate Children by Sara General for younger readers.

The difference being that these are by authors with intimate personal and cultural knowledge of the residential school system, not someone using it as a backdrop for their twee "everyone just needs to get along" story."

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't know that, but wow, that really rubs me the wrong way.

I did think it was trying to address the current cultural climate in the US because there were a lot of parallels and the solution was basically "be nice to the bigots and maybe you can convince them that you deserve to exist" which frustrates the fuck out of me. I hate that whole "we go high/enlightened centrism/'moderate'" mindset so much, but that's a whole different topic.

[sabotabby]

I hate that.

Like the solution to residential schools is not "everyone should be nice," it's that they needed to be closed, the survivors (and their families and descendants) given massive compensation and therapy, and everyone involved in running the schools up to the very top facing financial and criminal charges for their crimes against humanity and complicity in genocide. It's not something that can be solved by greater understanding and compassion.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't like it because I thought it would be a book written for adults (not the author's fault, he specified on his website that it was intended for a broader, all-age audience, and outside advertisement placed it in, like, Standard Fiction, so I assumed it was for an adult audience at the time) about a gay couple working together with magical orphans.

For me, it was trying to be too whimsy. It's so goddamn twee and I hated it because it had that energy. I can't stand twee.

[philstar22]

I keep being recced this book, but it just doesn't appeal to me.

[(Anonymous)]

SPOILERS
And the whole Lucifer thing brings up a lot of questions that are never even addressed let alone answered. I mean, there are gods/demons/satanism in this world? Is it a delusion? Is it someone else's delusion forced on a child? We never get to learn anything at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I read it and intensily disliked it. It's marketed as "found family", but what I found was "character is dropped into ready made family unit of complete strangers which everybody else incl. the author thinks he's an awful person for not immediately embracing 100%" - and that trope creeps me out.

[(Anonymous)]

After reading about the author's inspiration, I think a big part of the problem is that he's just not a good enough writer to pull it off. The topic needs nuance but it was just too simplistic and everyone came off as caricatures/tropes rather than actual characters with any depth.

[(Anonymous)]

I read the first few pages and wasn't digging it, so I checked out the Goodreads reviews to see what people who'd read the whole thing thought about it. Seeing what the 5-star reviews praised about the book and comparing them to the 1-star and 2-star reviews that focused more on its flaws (in the eyes of readers who disliked it) was an interesting experience, and I concluded that my tastes aligned more with the latter group and that this book was not for me.

Since you're not sure why you didn't entirely vibe with the book, maybe you should read some book reviews yourself? Someone else might have pinpointed the aspect of it that didn't work for you.

[(Anonymous)]

I listened to half of the audiobook, and I realized that listening to a single adult narrator having to voice multiple children is a painful experience. Might have been OK with it as an audio play, but the way that the characters and their dialogue were caricatured did not work as a passive listening experience at all.

On top of that the story felt like it was doing nothing new with the ideas beyond the central romance being gay. "Boring person falls for manic pixie dream person and discovers the meaning of family" stories can be fun for me as a guilty pleasure, but I was expecting more out of the praise