Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. WangMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m kind of in two minds about this book. It’s a dark academia fantasy, a standalone piece, and it gets a lot of R.F. Kuang comparisons because it’s dark academia from an Asian author with strong social justice themes.
Unlike Kuang’s Babel, however, it’s largely presented from the point of view of a white woman, and while it’s significant that she has to fight the patriarchy at every turn - Sciona is the city’s first ever female highmage, and the boys’ club makes it very clear they can barely tolerate her presence and want to lord it over her all the time - she’s also mired in a lot of privilege as a white person, especially when it comes to the book’s second protagonist.
Thomil, who is of an ethnic minority called the Kwen (the name of his people sounds Asian, and he’s got reddish hair like he’s Scottish or Irish to Sciona’s English, but in practice his people are more analogous to Native Americans, right down to the Tiranians trying to force their not-really-but-most-definitely Christian conservative ways on them if they are to live in the city) has magical skill of his own, but he only gets to be the janitor at the academy, and is assigned as Sciona’s assistant entirely as a crude joke. Thomil actually gets his most important POV time in the first chapter, where it’s very clear he should’ve been the protagonist from the start.
As highly rated as this book is, there are a lot of low reviews criticizing this book as a colonizer romance, and to an extent it’s unfortunately true. I don’t ship Sciona and Thomil for that precise reason - Sciona is racist as hell, and while she does unlearn that over the course of the story, the fact that she starts out so bigoted against the Kwen taints her character too much for me to care about her all that much.
But that was almost certainly Wang’s point, I expect. It’s a common refrain these days to point out how white women (especially those who are conservative or raised that way) cleave to their whiteness at their own expense, because of how much white supremacy and religious patriarchy and capitalist exploitation walk hand in hand in rotten hand. Even while Sciona gets better as a person, other women in her life refuse to lift a finger against the system.
And that, ultimately, is the core of this story, and like Kuang’s books, this one will stick with me for a while, especially with that ending.
But again, I do wish Thomil could’ve been the star of the show like he deserved.
View all my reviews
As highly rated as this book is, there are a lot of low reviews criticizing this book as a colonizer romance, and to an extent it’s unfortunately true. I don’t ship Sciona and Thomil for that precise reason - Sciona is racist as hell, and while she does unlearn that over the course of the story, the fact that she starts out so bigoted against the Kwen taints her character too much for me to care about her all that much.
But that was almost certainly Wang’s point, I expect. It’s a common refrain these days to point out how white women (especially those who are conservative or raised that way) cleave to their whiteness at their own expense, because of how much white supremacy and religious patriarchy and capitalist exploitation walk hand in hand in rotten hand. Even while Sciona gets better as a person, other women in her life refuse to lift a finger against the system.
And that, ultimately, is the core of this story, and like Kuang’s books, this one will stick with me for a while, especially with that ending.
But again, I do wish Thomil could’ve been the star of the show like he deserved.
View all my reviews
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