Aubrey Stewart > Recent Status Updates

It took a while to really catch my attention, but now I'm invested in the tale of Good Stab, the Cat Man, and Three Persons.

This is absolutely horrifying and sickening to read. Not just that these women and girls suffered so excruciatingly, but that so many people ignored warnings and writings and put profits over health, well-being, and quality of life.

So first we had an Asian woman sneak into the country illegally, birth an anchor baby, get her "papers" to become legal, and then abandon her child to spend all of her time protesting the very country she snuck into...and now we have anti-capitalist flash mobs stealing everything in a store because eff the rich!

It's so predictable at the point, and the fatigue is real.

Ah yes, the obligatory diatribe about illegal aliens being oppressed and law-abiding citizens being intolerant. All the social justice soapboxes in so much current SFF are predictable and ridiculous. Gone are the days of writers who could make you think about social/political/economic issues without slapping you in the face with it.

"Charon County had more guns than it had residents because most residents had more guns than they needed."

This from the sheriff who bought his own firearm, a SIG Sauer P320, even though the county provided him with a Smith & Wesson 9 mill, because he wanted to have more "stopping power." Hypocrite.

This whole scene with the Belle dress is utterly ridiculous. The dress sounds lovely, but the ghosts and other library things fluttering around helping Beau sew her into the dress like the mice with Cinderella's dress? Acting as though anything Beyonce has said could hold a spot on the dress alongside quotes by Marcus Aurelius and Yeats?

Alix, about to go into the book Arabian Nights: "I really hope I don't end up in some harem pants outfit. Feels just a bit culturally appropriative on a basic white girl like me --"

Seriously? Another box ticked on the checklist *eye roll*

It's like the author had a checklist while writing and ticked nearly every single box: plump FMC, old Iranian woman, non-binary(?) French person, trans CHILD, beautiful man who is both multiracial and bisexual and seemingly has no flaws, lecture on poverty, lecture on slavery, lecture on corporations, lecture on colonizers, lecture on student loans... This book could be half as long and the story would be the same.

"The kind who like burning books instead of reading them?"
"More or less. And who don't believe that girls can actually be boys even if they don't have the right plumbing."

This was stated by a CHILD. What a bunch of man-hating, feminist/trans/social justice warrior slop.