i feel like everyone reviewing this is reading a simpler, non-existent version of this book where everything is super black and white and you’re either “tricked” into rooting for the protagonist (who literally shows her true colors asap so like? were you tricked or just bought lies she tells herself) or have to read the whole thing shaking your head to show how you Don’t Approve. “athena liu is clearly r f kuang’s self-insert” literally did we read the same book? yes there are Glimpses but why would she depict herself that way?? this isn’t making sense anymore and also i know im reviewing the reviews more than the book rn but for me a large part of what this book was about is how nuance gets lost in The Discourse, which isn’t to say that the presence of nuance makes everyone “equally bad” or anything but it does complicate the discussion and yet Book Discourse cannot find a way to be more complex than “x bad y good”. and yet that’s a trap im seeing a lot of the reviews fall into??

ok now actually about the book: i flew through it but i also don’t know whether any of this makes sense to someone completely unfamiliar with publishing and book twitter and all - like I have my mom reading Babel rn, if she picks this up after finishing that, girlie will be like whaaat is going on. I don’t think this is a bad thing but for a book kind of stressing the insularity (? i don’t think that’s the word I’m looking for but whatever) of publishing, how it’s its own little world, i think it might be assuming too much prior knowledge from readers. that being said i think when you ARE in the know this works as a really great satire as you watch june just absolutely fucking spiral. can i say it was giving TÁR? like what TÁR is about gender and abuse and exploitation but about race and theft and exploitation. anyway. good book!