Stef Rozitis's Reviews > Fly by Night

The world building was mostly good apart from tediously gendered. At first I thought the gendered nonsense was the whole point, because here and there a female character broke through the dominant narrative a little bit but over the very long, extremely slow moving book this was neutralised by some sort of internalised misogyny which was mild at first but layered over so many times it became more and more obvious.

The worst part was the romance. For starters the context of it was this essentialistic heterosexuality with the god/goddess men are the sun women are the moon nonsense which at first seems complex and nuanced (maybe) the imbalances seem like they might be part of the predicament but oh no! So then you have the protagonist (just barely a protagonist), Eleanor. She is portrayed as selfish, vain, shallow and childish. This point is laboured again and again. At first you think - maybe this is to show the contrast with the world she has come to...but not really.

She's in the context of the sour and barren (that word is even used) Nerissa and the childishly caring , beloved (dead) Karis. Later we get the completely vapid but supposedly beautiful Mariana. Eleanor is set up as being a "bad woman" one who is useless and will be punished/humiliated by the plot. I told myself I was being too cynical and paranoid and kept reading.

Enter Lukas, taciturn, grumpy, capable, self-sufficient, disapproving, kind of brutal but portrayed as somehow attractive to Eleanor. Ugh. It seems obvious what is going to happen. No. Lukas has a love interest. Phew. Lucky escape for Eleanor although she gets broody/jealous about it in a way that makes little sense. Eleanor's rival gets abruptly fried by the goddess for no good reason (dead wives abound in this book BTW). Lukas now hates Eleanor and blames her for it. She is sad because he is attractive (eye rolling from me as reader).

Later on he punches her in the face. She realises she deserved it. He realises she is attractive with a bruised face and they decide they are in forever love (without the relationship at any point having been good). UGH. DV portrayed as valid mating habits. Then she teaches him how to play chess and he is instantly much better at it than her. He goes hunting and gathering in their "eden" and she is making useless sandcastles and insisting she wants to be passive and decorate things. I have met women who want to be passive and spend their lives decorating things but in te book this is portrayed as "natural". Men are active, women are forced to choose when things happen to them.

More eye rolling. Also in the real world as I was reading that part and already horrified a real life celebrity woman was violently murdered by her husband. These stories are not innocent!

Some of the writing early on was good with desciptions of flight, magic and the giant birds. The giant birds became deus ex machina as the book progressed (which I admit is the role of giant birds in books generally - I am looking at you Tolkein). As the book became laboured pseudo-psychological stuff about reality, belief, gods, and heteronormativity I lost interest so I am not sure if the writing actually became less good and the descriptions less compelling or if just the terrible characters had lost me.

I tried to remind myself that this was written in 1990. What was I reading back then? Lord Foul's Bane and Dune and misogynist shit like that and as a female writer Jenny Jones must have had a hard time breaking into the genre...but also it was 1990 not 1960 as I kept thinking reading this (it's full of faux sexual liberation, meaning successful femininity is being as slutty as possible but knowing you are ultimately worthless and useless. Not to be confused with actual sexual agency that can say "yes" and "no" for reasons other than manipulation). Perhaps the 90s actually were like that. I didn't get out much!

IDK. Interesting to read to help me understand how far the genre has come and to put into context the works that are still like this. But I certainly won't be seeking out the rest in the series.