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Review - Stitching Snow by R. C. Lewis
Dec. 24th, 2014 05:52 pm(Content note: mention of incest, sexual assault)
I...don't know how to feel about this book.
As a sci-fi retelling of Snow White, it's pretty solid. The worldbuilding was interesting (though with a vaguely fantasy element concerning the body-hopping power...which...didn't seem to be all that important in the end other than setting up the Fantastic Racism in the book), the plot never dragged, Essie was a great protagonist (she likes engineering and coding, whoohoo), and I loved the idea of seven drones standing in for the seven dwarfs.
There's one major thing that bothers me about this book, though, and that's the fact that the threat of sexual assault is everywhere.
Whenever Essie is alone with a man, she's afraid he's going to rape her. I guess this kind of makes sense at the end when it's...sort of implied that her father used to rape her. Or something. It was a bit vague.
But I am so, so tired of sexual assault being seen as something that will inevitably happen to women in fiction. There is nothing inevitable about sexual assault except for the fact that misogyny and sexism makes it so. And fantasy/sci-fi is the best place to create worlds that don't have misogyny and don't have to have female characters be afraid that every man they meet wants to rape them.
There's a difference between writing a book that deliberately points out how widespread and damaging sexual assault is and then critiques it, versus a book that just reinforces and normalizes the idea that women are always going to be vulnerable because men want to rape them. My head hurts just trying to understand why rape cultue continues to get reinforced, because it's terrible for everyone involved. Women should be able to live and walk around in society without fear of gender-based violence. Also, I'd always thought that men should be insulted at the idea that they are so unable to control their sexual urges, they are compelled to rape women all the time.
Other things I wanted to mention about this book: the romance wasn't terrible (there was no insta-love, thank goodness), Dane was a pretty good guy overall, and they were kind of cute together at the end, but it still felt to me that they fell in love too quickly and/or I wasn't sure why they fell in love in the first place. I think there was an implication at some point that Essie liked Dane for being one of the only guys who didn't look at her in a creepy rapist kind of way, which is somewhat problematic because in real life many rapists are not monstrous creepsters but Nice Guys(TM), and that's a major problem when no one believes that a Nice Guy could be capable of such a horrific crime as rape and therefore the rape victim isn't believed.
One last thing I want to say is that this book definitely follows the recent trend of "gritty" and "grimdark" storytelling. It's not as unbearable as some other things I've read, because at least it didn't feel like the author was trying to be gritty for the sake of gritty or for shock value, but still. By the end, Essie and Dane rack up quite a significant body count between the two of them, and there's not much reflection on the fact that they've killed a bunch of people. So there's that.
...Ugh, I did not want to get into social justice issues with a sci-fi book, I just wanted something light to read over winter break...
I...don't know how to feel about this book.
As a sci-fi retelling of Snow White, it's pretty solid. The worldbuilding was interesting (though with a vaguely fantasy element concerning the body-hopping power...which...didn't seem to be all that important in the end other than setting up the Fantastic Racism in the book), the plot never dragged, Essie was a great protagonist (she likes engineering and coding, whoohoo), and I loved the idea of seven drones standing in for the seven dwarfs.
There's one major thing that bothers me about this book, though, and that's the fact that the threat of sexual assault is everywhere.
Whenever Essie is alone with a man, she's afraid he's going to rape her. I guess this kind of makes sense at the end when it's...sort of implied that her father used to rape her. Or something. It was a bit vague.
But I am so, so tired of sexual assault being seen as something that will inevitably happen to women in fiction. There is nothing inevitable about sexual assault except for the fact that misogyny and sexism makes it so. And fantasy/sci-fi is the best place to create worlds that don't have misogyny and don't have to have female characters be afraid that every man they meet wants to rape them.
There's a difference between writing a book that deliberately points out how widespread and damaging sexual assault is and then critiques it, versus a book that just reinforces and normalizes the idea that women are always going to be vulnerable because men want to rape them. My head hurts just trying to understand why rape cultue continues to get reinforced, because it's terrible for everyone involved. Women should be able to live and walk around in society without fear of gender-based violence. Also, I'd always thought that men should be insulted at the idea that they are so unable to control their sexual urges, they are compelled to rape women all the time.
Other things I wanted to mention about this book: the romance wasn't terrible (there was no insta-love, thank goodness), Dane was a pretty good guy overall, and they were kind of cute together at the end, but it still felt to me that they fell in love too quickly and/or I wasn't sure why they fell in love in the first place. I think there was an implication at some point that Essie liked Dane for being one of the only guys who didn't look at her in a creepy rapist kind of way, which is somewhat problematic because in real life many rapists are not monstrous creepsters but Nice Guys(TM), and that's a major problem when no one believes that a Nice Guy could be capable of such a horrific crime as rape and therefore the rape victim isn't believed.
One last thing I want to say is that this book definitely follows the recent trend of "gritty" and "grimdark" storytelling. It's not as unbearable as some other things I've read, because at least it didn't feel like the author was trying to be gritty for the sake of gritty or for shock value, but still. By the end, Essie and Dane rack up quite a significant body count between the two of them, and there's not much reflection on the fact that they've killed a bunch of people. So there's that.
...Ugh, I did not want to get into social justice issues with a sci-fi book, I just wanted something light to read over winter break...
