Re. my last review for this series: I changed my mind, it's definitely racist.
Blah blah Anne Bishop, blah blah one-trick pony, blah blah weird gender stuff that gets more and more gender essentialist the longer it goes on, blah blah I just realized I've basically read the same book five times for each of the Others Books.
So much for the review.
As I was saying: the thing about the imperialist and racist undertones when it comes to the terra indigene is that reading them as an examination thereof and a response to colonialism rather than solely an appropriation and erasure of indigenous people's experiences is predicated on presuming that Bishop is not the kind of insensitive author who would, oh, I dunno, code teh bad guy as such using black stereotypes.
(Aside - Bishop has NO idea about the world building in Namid and how it works. Like, the sheer number of technological advances predicated on the existence of an industrial revolution that would have destroyed both the terra indigene and the open spaces of Namid, not to mention on widescale cooperation between humans necessary to create things like the US highway system, is mind boggling. Also, given the altered history of the world, was there a slave trade? If so, how the hell does that fit into the world building and power dynamics and, if not, why does racism look the same in Thaisia as it does in North America?)
No, but seriously. There's a good, black police officer and his daughter and then there's his mother and she basically exists to be The Help and mentor everyone in some kind of tough love situation because black women get to do everyone else's emotional labor (and also be a cleaning service). And then there's his brother, who refers to his girlfriend as a bitch and speaks in what I can only describe as a white lady's idea of what a hip hop fan who uses SAV grammar rules sounds like. He also talks about wanting to hump her (FFS, if you're going to have a character insult and degrade women, why not have them think the word fuck inside their own head?) But it's so obviously a "black people are great as long as they act just like white people" that I can't even with it. Also, let's be fair, there was no need to differentiate between the two brothers like that. I assume it wasn't intentional, but it says a lot about the pervasiveness of racism in this country (and, as many indigenous peoples know from the history of imperialism) that even when it's ostensibly not about skin, it's about assimilating into the dominant culture and erasing all markers of different culture and society to lose your self in order to gain approval.
He also brings into focus a certain sameness about Bishop's villains: they are all entirely selfish and entirely evil. She never writes about people driven by sincere belief, or misunderstandings of scenarios, or the desire to protect those they love AS VILLAINS. Her villains are always just evil and selfish and shallow and, while I won't deny such people exist (in the first year of the reign of the 45th president of the united states, how could I?), it is really boring to read about such shallow villains with no interiority over and over again AND Bishop writes evil as just...something that happens in the world. Like Namid's teeth and claws, some people are inherently dangerous. But her writing, by and large, absolves the conditions of society that shape cruelty and selfishness. Evil feels both inevitable and random; everyone is either doing the best they can for the right side OR a cartoon villain twirling their mustache.
The longer this series goes on, the more shallow and less satisfying it feels. Probably a good thing this is the last book.