Simon Hawk

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

When I read the description of this book, I was looking forward to it. A high fantasy story with intrigue, mystery, unrequited love, murderous plots, etc. -- sign me up! And while those elements are present here, I found them hard to follow and truly enjoy.

Here's why: everything is overshadowed by gratuitous sex scenes. There are over 30 chapters in this book and I think it averages about one scene per chapter. Furthermore, most of those scenes are the result of compulsion, traditions involving dubious levels of consent, or manipulation (one character openly admits to performing an act with the hope the recipient would be more agreeable to a request). And there isn't anything steamy or romantic about these scenes--they are entirely about 'getting off'. While the story elements that are interrupted by these scenes have promise, they get lost behind all of this.

I also had a hard time reconciling a few things about this society. The largest of these was the way in which characters of all levels of the social hierarchy seem to engage in gay sexual relations with reckless abandon but we suddenly learn it's highly illegal and punishable by death. And although it's punishable by death, a perfectly acceptable alternate sentence is forced gay prostitution--that seems contradictory and hardly something such a society would be likely to condone. Add to that the fact that no one seems to flinch at compelling people to engage in sexual acts using magic or at the suggestion that gang rape is a perfectly acceptable mechanism for dealing with people who are uncooperative, and this book finds its way into the realm of incredibly problematic.

I struggled for a bit on how to rate this story. While I find some of the content questionable and I feel like it was constructed in such a way that the story is secondary to these problematic elements, I do feel like the actual storyline has promise and could make for a great novel if the sex (and related content) was scaled back. So I'm giving this a hesitant two stars and a very skeptical benefit of the doubt.… (lisätietoja)