justinlife's Reviews (916)

I’m a “buy a book by its cover” kinda person and this cover got me. We got great use of reds and blues, shadows and light. We got a bad ass looking woman in a cool car. We got what could be some mystical shit. It got me. 

The book is fun. You’re dealing with a black lesbian reporter in 1973 with special powers for fighting off evil. You got mob issues, an evil ghost committee, veterans, new black mayor, etc. Lots of fun. 

A couple things didn’t work for me. The dialogue is clunky. Ahmed might have been going for a blacksploitation kind of vibe, which fine. I’m not sure as I’m not familiar with that genre as much. The vibe was off though. Maybe after reading books by black and queer authors about black and queer characters, it felt like it was written from an outsiders POV about an inside experience. 

Did it take away from the fun? Not really. It was still great to see black queer characters. The plot does move lightning fast and character development suffers because of it. I’d still read a sequel though. Especially cuz the art and coloring really held it together.

Like Circe, Miller writes a sad character with low self esteem coming into their own later in the book. For what I like to read, it’s a departure and it was infuriating. The last half though picks up and you can see Patroclus coming into his own. 

I appreciate all that she does here though. She takes a tale that has been a part of Western society for almost 3,000 years and offers a new perspective. She makes the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles into something we all know it to be. It’s great seeing gay themes and relationships between men shown in a positive, loving way. She also keeps the balance of mythological creatures and humans which grounds the story. Patroclus is a sad sack through the majority of the book and that weighed on me and it would have been great to get Achilles’ perspective, but overall this is a fun read.

A love a pretty cover and this one is gorge. That’s the main reason I bought it. The book is really good. It’s also a black queer writer writing a black queer fantasy, which I didn’t know going in and LOVED!

It’s an epic, it’s mythology (and all the fuckery that entails), it’s fantasy, it’s a mystery novel, and it combines these genres nicely. 

I see comparisons to Game of Thrones, but I didn’t read those nor watch many of the episodes. Maybe the cruelness and the casualness of abuse and violence is similar. It was a bit rough to get through but overall it’s a really good book with a complicated story and complex characters. And also YAY BLACK QUEER STORIES!