Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas Book Review

Before I start the review, here is a meme for your viewing pleasure.

Now that we're done with that, on to the review. Rating: 2 out of 5 bastards ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary Cemetery Boys is a 2020 debut novel from Aiden Thomas. It follows Yadriel and Maritza who are brujxs. They can talk to and summon ghosts. Yadriel wants to summon his cousin's ghost. Because his cousin was murdered, he worries that his cousin’s ghost won’t be able to move on properly. Hence, he wants his cousin's ghost to be able to be free. Yadriel also wants to summon his cousin’s ghost to prove himself, because his family believes that only men can be brujos. Since Yadriel is a trans man, his family deadnames him and treats him like a woman. He performs the ritual to find his cousin’s ghost but fucks it up and ends up releasing the ghost of Julian, a dude he knew from school. Julian would also like to get to the bottom of his own death, which is very relatable. Yadriel and Julian agree to help each other with their respective missions and fall in love. Wooooo gay ghosts! Review We are...13 for 13 on books that tell and don't show. At this point I'm really just repeating myself a lot, which is what these books do as they explain every plot point and then repeat it a couple pages later in case you didn't get it. It's really frustrating because, otherwise, all these books have a lot of potential. The Gilded Ones, The Final Strife, Legendborn...the list goes on. Good premises, creative shit going on, characters with potential... but the incessant "telling me everything that's happening like we're writing an essay in the 10th grade" fuckin’ blows. In this book, we start off with a very interesting premise. Latinx magic and legends are real and influence the world around us. The Latinx and Caribbean cultures referenced in this book are rife with extremely interesting mythology that could make a Hella Good Book. You could focus a book on say, Incan gods, and that, by itself, would be overflowing with goodness. You could write a book about one small Caribbean island's culture and make a whole series. Unfortunately, that's only half the battle. Nay, it may be less than half the battle. It might be like. 39 percent of the battle. An interesting premise is the start but for me it comes down to the execution. Because, I can only sit and read an interesting premise but poor execution book for so long. I can only take the below kind of over-explaining every once in a while, not every page of a 577-page long book.

Like, I've read children's books with less explaining than this. Out of all the over- explaining, expositiony books I've read this year, Cemetery Boys is clocking in as the worst offender. This author did not trust us to figure ANYTHING out. Every. Single. Little. Thing is explained. Then explained again. Then explained once more, for clarity. Every page I was having to pause and just stare into the middle distance. Or speak to the team at bastard reviews like I was a boxer and they were the folks in my corner. I'd receive a pep talk, squirt of water to the mouth and a good laugh and then I’d dive back in. I actually don't really have much else to say about this book. The mythology was interesting but I can't keep reading this blatant telling shit. I've already [rhoa meme] said what I said! in 4 reviews regarding this. Other bastard reviewers have also said similar things in their reviews. Oh, wait I got something. The book is inconsistent. So, the main ideas in this book are. Brujos are men. Brujas are women. Brujxs refers to the whole group. Yet, Yadriel is constantly deadnamed and the narrator bluntly states shit like "pronouns are hard when you have a gendered language". Yes, Spanish (as it is historically) is a gendered language. So why do the brujxs in this book use the actual word brujx. If they understand the concept of a gender-neutral term for brujx and actively use it rather than using the masculine term brujo for everything, then how do they have an issue referring to Yadriel with correct pronouns? Why are they able to properly update their language in accordance with newer Spanish language conventions, but can't do the same for their own homeboy? I know the generalized explanation will be, well people are flawed and they fuck up sometimes. Or something about how families are complicated. Agreed. But, this is not just a family inconsistency; rather it is a narrative inconsistency. There are also plot points that escape me. And leave me with a lot of questions. Brujos and Brujas have different powers, so the powers are inexplicably also tied to gender and sex. Both groups can see spirits.  The brujos have the power to raise spirits and call on them and also help the spirits cross over. The brujas have the power to heal things before they ever become spirits. The book is kinda supposed to look at gender differently since our protagonist is a trans man. Not only that but the book pretty much outright states that it's about looking at gender differently. But it kinda ends up reinforcing a lot of gender shit in a way. Like Yadriel and his powers, for example. Because he is actually a man, he has the proper ghost powers that men would have. My question then becomes: what if a woman wanted to be a brujo? Not because this individual is actually a man, and perhaps just hasn't realized it yet, but simply just because. Like... she wants to be a woman brujo. Then what. Can she do that? What if a man wants to heal and be a bruja? Where do nonbinary people fall in this paradigm? Agender people? Polygender people? What if a trans man inherently has the bruja powers? Is he not still a man? What if trans woman wants to be brujo? Is she now not woman enough because she wants the male-assigned powers? What about an intersex person? Are they born with both sets of powers? Or would the power go to the gender the person feels most aligned with? How would this then interact with the way intersex people often get forced to align with a certain gender? This is not to say Aiden Thomas must be the person to answer all these questions. An author doesn't always have to know every little detail of the system of their story. This is just to say, there's an implication that happens when you tie certain characteristics to gender. Whether they are characteristics that exist in our world, or characteristics for your fantasy world. When you tell me: only a man can be a brujo! These powers are associated with men and men only! Men and men accessories! Then you tell me that it's wrong of the characters to think this because they exclude trans men from this, so they are saying only cisgender men can be brujos. But wait! Trans men also have the innate powers of the brujo, thus implying that the presence of the power validates their manhood. Idk man but ... I squint a lil. Just a lil. Because, what’s bothering me here is: the general implication of it all. Tying certain characteristics into gender and making it so that these characteristics validate the gender. It’s just a reminder that gender roles and misogyny are still kicking our ass as a society. This ties into the handling of misogyny, or rather, the lack of handling. Again. Not really necessary, per say. But when you write a book that is so focused on gender norms, gender roles, and seemingly breaking those roles; omitting the discussing of misogyny from the book feels like A Choice. Misogyny is the root of a lot of other -isms. Yadriel has a female cousin who doesn't heal. This would be a great way to explore the gender roles expected of a person who identifies as a woman in this world. Instead, the author made the character a vegan and had that be the sole form of oppression she received. Veganism... It just is like. What oppression would a woman face? Well, I can't think of anything! Let's make her a vegan!

The only time misogyny gets discussed is when the Yadriel character is misgendered. And the misogyny isn’t even portrayed as overall...bad. It’s just portrayed as bad because it affects Yadriel. He’s really a shit character tbh. Entirely self-centered and the books narrative goes out of its way to make him seem very perfect. Zero character or character development to be found. If he wasn’t such a 2d character, I’d have more to say, but alas. The other main characters don’t fare much better. The exact wording that I need to describe all the gender problems in this book is escaping me so I'll quit while I'm ahead. I guess I wonder why these authors do all this explaining for everyday stuff but then leave complicated concepts up to chance and for readers to be ultimately confused. This is a rhetorical question. The answer is that these authors often don’t realize the complex problems they accidentally brought up. Or if they did, they didn’t have the depth to explore them or simply didn’t want to. I'll give this a 2 giant jaguar ghosts outta 5 ghosts that do a lil gardening in their spare time. I think the author needs to go back to the drawing board and craft a book where they can trust the reader to be able to infer things on their own. And like. Read a book. Because that’s what reading is. It’s reading and inferring things on your own. While you read. And are inferring things. And drawing conclusions while you read.