I’m going to be honest here, guys. I haven’t finished
reading the book yet.
Because I like knowing what I’m getting into (and because I
hate surprises) I read the Wikipedia plot synopsis before ever even picking up
the title. I was intrigued by the premise
and the world building, so I started reading. And lo and behold, Emiko, one of
the main characters, is not quite human and is forced into sexual slavery and
abused in return for her chance at “life.” The kicker is that she has been
genetically engineered to obey. This sounds like the wet fantasy of every
teenage science fiction fanboy if I’ve ever heard one.
I’m just so tired of these tropes and the constant
exploitation of women in a lot of science fiction and fantasy. There have got
to be better stories out there than ones for women with a “magical fairy
vagina” or an equivalent of that. You see this trope played out in so many
different kinds of stories, and sadly, they are some of the most popular tv
programs, movies, and books in the media right now. Take Bella from Twilight
(shut up, I know you all read it before it was taboo, or you’ve at least made
fun of the extraordinarily bad movies). Something about her blood makes her
irresistible, not just to her boyfriend, but to ~every~ supernatural being that
comes along. Something about her is so precious that she must be endlessly used
and abused by everyone around her and she has next to no agency of her own.
I’m tired of it and it needs to stop. The fact that Emiko’s sex
object status was used as the jumping-off point for her character made me not
want to finish the book at all. I don’t like stories that use rape and abuse as
plot devices and I don’t like the way it was used here.
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