TW: racism, raging fatphobia, misogyny

Wheeeew weee this is a tough one. I'm a big fan of this series, especially the first book. I re-read this one after a decade and boy is there a lot of racist ideas and undertones.

Every evil character has "a crooked nose", the characters from other races are described by their skin tones in such offensive and outdated terms, especially the Princess of an East Asian inspired country. Her traits are she's small, always pointing out she's tiny, each sentence she's mentioned is her petite frame and small feet, and then her skin colour is always mentioned as... We'll, the old and VERY racist colour description.

Honestly, I'm flabbergasted that this recently republished book didn't edit any of those incredibly dated discriptions out. The audiobook was re-release in *2021*. How does ANY editor or publisher not catch this? How does the narrator not catch this as she's reading and not do a spit-take?

Another issue is the fatphobia is rampint. All the undesirable people are only described by their weight and how ugly they are because of it. By the end, the fat women the main character, Abdullah, was going to have to marry get hoisted off (without their concent) on another person so he can marry to pretty 'slim' girl.

Misogyny is pretty bad. There were some great strong and powerful woman, don't get me wrong, Sophie is undoubtedly a feminist icon in my head. However the women needing to be rescued by men in the ending, so much so that one man demands a wife in payment for his help, is incredibly bad.

Lastly, while I'm white as paste and am no expert on South Asian/Middle Eastern culture, but even I can easily pick up there are so many raging stereotypes and outdated racist ideas of these cultures.

The more I write this review the lower my rating goes. The only redeeming quality was Sophie and Howel.