 |
| Blood Over Bright Haven By M.L. Wang |
Book title:
Blood Over Bright Haven
Author:
M.L. Wang
Genre:
Fantasy, dystopian
Published: July
25, 2023
428 pages
My rating:
5/5
“Brilliant men—even moderately intelligent men—in this city get showered with opportunities to succeed. Brilliant women have to fight for those opportunities, and, when we get them, we have to defend them tooth and nail, or they’ll be snatched away.”
27-year-old Sciona Freynan has worked hard to become a Highmage at the University of Magics. When she finally becomes the first woman to get a position there, she finds herself undermined by her colleagues. Instead of getting a lab assistant, she is paired with Thomil, a janitor. But Thomil turns out to be exactly the assistant Sciona needs to succeed in her research and uncover centuries-old secrets.
Blood Over Bright Haven is M.L. Wang’s adult dystopian fantasy standalone. It has been recommended to me left and right, and I’m so glad I read this book. What an amazing read and worth all the praise it gets! This book is truly dark academia—a story where the academia itself is the source of evil. The story explores the themes of sexism, classism, racism, and the persecution of native peoples.
The setting is vaguely Victorian: women are expected to stay at home and give birth to children. It’s also reminiscent of the 1950s housewife ideal. It wasn’t an intentional decision, but I was reading this book alongside Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and it made a great pair for this book. In the world of Blood Over Bright Haven, women and ethnic minorities are treated as lesser beings who don’t deserve the same rights as (white/Tiranian) men.
The only negative thing I have to say about this book boils down to a personal preference. The first chapter is written from Thomil’s point of view, but we have to wait until the midpoint of the book until we see his perspective again. Majority of the story is from Sciona’s perspective, and she can be rather unlikable. She’s a self-proclaimed egoist who doesn’t care about other people, and she has accepted her society’s racist assumptions without questioning them. Personally, I prefer it when dual point-of-view books divide the attention between the main characters somewhat equally. Now Thomil’s perspective was heavily underutilized, and when we finally do get to experience it, it felt almost unnecessary.
Overall, I loved this book. The first half felt rather slow with all the worldbuilding and exposition, but after the midpoint the pacing picks up. I highly recommend this fantasy novel to everyone, and I gave it five stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment