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simonlorden 's review for:
Somewhere in Between
by Natasja Hellenthal
This really wasn't my thing, for multiple reasons. The 100 pages of this book are divided into three parts, so I'll talk about all three:
1) The first 20% of the book is a foreword, which talks about the author's motivation, and also gives a lot of information about intersex people - including... page-long charts with exact medical definitions? -- Now, I understand this information is important, but having it be 1/5th of the book and placing it BEFORE the story really didn't work for me. It might have been better to write a SHORT foreword about motivation, then at the back of the book, provide info about intersex people and give links for further readings if anybody wants to go deeper.
2) The next 40% of the book is the actual story, which is about an intersex person, Yarden, falling in love with a shapeshifting alien (?) who switches between genders. There isn't much plot to be honest, and a lot of it is introspective and wondering about gender and sexuality. This isn't a bad thing, but it wasn't what I expected from a fantasy story - it felt very trans/intersex 101, I guess?
3) And everything after 65% is the first chapter of a different book by the author, which I honestly didn't read, both because I didn't like the short story THAT much, and because I felt a little cheated. I mean, seriously? Only 40% of the book is the actual story? Even if we count the introductory 20%, that's only a little more than half of the ebook. This is a big pet peeve of mine tbh. I'm okay with including some snippets, but I don't want 35% of my ebook to be a sampler for a completely different book.
+ Also, this isn't really clear from the blurb and this work is not listed as part of a series, but apparently the story takes place in the universe of the author's Comyenti series.
Note: The actual short story uses the word hermaphrodite several times, which the author justifies with the fantasy setting.
Overall, I can't speak for the accuracy of the intersex information because I'm not, but this book didn't really work for me.
1) The first 20% of the book is a foreword, which talks about the author's motivation, and also gives a lot of information about intersex people - including... page-long charts with exact medical definitions? -- Now, I understand this information is important, but having it be 1/5th of the book and placing it BEFORE the story really didn't work for me. It might have been better to write a SHORT foreword about motivation, then at the back of the book, provide info about intersex people and give links for further readings if anybody wants to go deeper.
2) The next 40% of the book is the actual story, which is about an intersex person, Yarden, falling in love with a shapeshifting alien (?) who switches between genders. There isn't much plot to be honest, and a lot of it is introspective and wondering about gender and sexuality. This isn't a bad thing, but it wasn't what I expected from a fantasy story - it felt very trans/intersex 101, I guess?
3) And everything after 65% is the first chapter of a different book by the author, which I honestly didn't read, both because I didn't like the short story THAT much, and because I felt a little cheated. I mean, seriously? Only 40% of the book is the actual story? Even if we count the introductory 20%, that's only a little more than half of the ebook. This is a big pet peeve of mine tbh. I'm okay with including some snippets, but I don't want 35% of my ebook to be a sampler for a completely different book.
+ Also, this isn't really clear from the blurb and this work is not listed as part of a series, but apparently the story takes place in the universe of the author's Comyenti series.
Note: The actual short story uses the word hermaphrodite several times, which the author justifies with the fantasy setting.
Overall, I can't speak for the accuracy of the intersex information because I'm not, but this book didn't really work for me.