The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi Book Review

Rating: 2 out of 5 bastards

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well right off the bat this book starts off with a... say it with me now! BADLY DRAWN MAP! Random pictures, no scale bar, no key to tell us what the hell we are looking at. Idk whether we are looking at a country, towns within a country, a continent, a petri dish, my bedroom floor... Truly all style, no substance. And honestly...that's what this book is. Roll summary! Summary: So, [movie announcer man voice] in a world, people have different blood colors. The people with red blood are the ruling class, people with blue blood are the working class and people with clear blood are the slave class. I will pause here to clarify: while I do not need everything to be explained to me as I've made clear in my previous reviews of recent releases that have their own issues with over- explanation, I would have appreciated some further look/explanation into these blood differences. Specifically, I would have appreciated some look on the science behind them. More on this in the review. Our book follows Sylah, Anoor and Hassa. Sylah is a former revolutionary, who has become addicted to drugs following her adopted family's murder. She appears to be a blue blood worker but as we are told a very obvious story before her introduction, it becomes clear she's a red-blooded child that ended up in the lower-class quarter during an op mission. Specifically, she and the other children were planted to one day bring down the tyranny of the red bloods, called Embers. Anoor appears to be an upper-class red blood but once again we get very clunky 1- page foreshadowing before the reveal that she's a blue blood, masquerading. Hassa is a clear blood, called ghostings in the book. She's a part of the slave class. Together they shall take down this society once and for all. Supposedly. Allegedly. Review: (Cw for talks of slavery throughout the world and mutilation done wherein) I have a number of different issues with this book, some little and some not-so-little, so come along with me on this uncoordinated ride. Number one issue I ran into with this book: lack of research and forethought. Specifically, scientific research and historical research. A lot of recent releases have been operating on a premise of:  I, The Author, thought of this Cool Thing! But when tasked with diving into The Cool Thing and really getting into the meat of The Cool Thing, the author cannot. They do not have the imagination, clarity, research skills, and storytelling ability to expound on The Cool Thing. It's a shame because there are a number of Cool Things in this book. The main one being the different blood colors. Now, one can say: "Well this is fantasy, Mr. Peachy! Anything goes!" This is true. However, every fantasy is bound by the rules of that world and these rules are created by the author. If the author tells me a rule on page 8 and contradicts the same rule on page 16 without there being a storytelling reason behind it, that is not good plotting or storytelling and it speaks to a lack of research. In this story, we are given some biology clues (and tbh clues is stretching it. We are told certain biology things, flatly, stated in the narrative in this over- expositional writing style that seems to have become super common). We are told that the blood thing is a biological difference, that people with clear blood have heart problems as one would expect from people with blood that lacks hemoglobin, which is what makes blood red. So, here's something that seems biologically sound. However. Having such low hemoglobin that your blood is clear mean you should also be the most anemic person on the planet. You should be. Well. Uh. Dead. And if not dead...extremely weak. Yet the clear blood people are. Slaves. Expected to do labor of all types. Additionally, the clear blood people are mutilated early on in life. More on this later. This book also veers into the same problem as The Gilded Ones where people manage to hide blood differences somehow. Our main character is secretly a red blood but has been hiding amongst the blue and clear bloods her whole life. Bleeding is such a normal part of life. I'm gonna copy paste my bleeding rant here from my Gilded Ones review and I want you to imagine we are in a sitcom flashback complete with the cheesy flashback harp music. [strums my harp] “Okay, so our author has explained away that the girls don't have periods until after they're 16 years old. This is of course explained through flat narration. I'm not gonna say that it doesn't make sense, necessarily. This is a fantasy world with fantasy White people and fantasy Black people and fantasy Asian people and fantasy Motherly people. So, she can do whatever she wants here. However. This is a fantasy world based upon some real-life people and conventions, to a degree. There are real life expys of real-life people in this book. The emperor in this book is coming to mind, as he is at least named after a past real-life emperor of what is now Benin. And, according to the author, appears to be based on that real- life emperor to a degree.  But, it's still a fantasy, where monsters roam the land and people perform feats of magic. So, I wonder why she didn't just take it farther. She coulda just. Made these folks real hardy. Like stab 'em and they don't bleed hardy. Could have made the girls not have periods. Why do periods have to be a thing in a world where people bleed gold? In real life, if you bleed gold, it would be... I lack the words. Let me look to my compatriots. As fellow bastard reviewer Perihelion said, and I quote: "Man what kinda iron deficiency." So many ways the author could have taken the "never bleed until the ceremony" thing and she took the route of least resistance. But, as we've established, the author lacks imagination. And true vision. And good writing. And... Because, honestly, how does staying away from sharp objects keep you from bleeding? Children fall down. They scrape a knee. They get bitten by dogs. They get a splinter. They get a blister on their foot that pops after they walk across the world’s largest shopping center parking lot from Best Buy to Party City in flip flops. We have blood vessels in our eyes. People get random nosebleeds. (Which even happens in Chapter 2 to Deka's very own father.) How do you stop women, and only women, from bleeding for 16 years...like what is going ooooooooonnnnn. It just doesn't make sense that you can make it to 16 years old and not bleed. It doesn't. It cannot be explained away! Maybe if there was some worldbuilding about super thick skin or any level of some showing rather than telling some things I could let it go but there isn't. As such, this shit is ridiculous and takes you right out the book because of how little it makes sense. I'm calm. No, I'm not. Like, you can see blood under a human's skin! I can turn my hands over and see the red blood underneath the skin of my palms. There are white girl expys in this book with “cute pink cheeks” according to the narration. If they have pink cheeks, it stands to reason that their blood is... red. What else would be causing the pinkness of their cheeks? Is everybody in this society science deficient as well as iron deficient? This later gets ret-conned in the book by saying their blood changes once they come into their heritage. So, then, why are they not allowed to bleed before then? Then... their blood would be red like anybody else's.” [throws harp somewhere off to the side] Basically, I don’t need to write anything else on this topic because I pretty much already said it. It’s gonna be really hard to hide blood differences in a society, I don’t care how secretive you try to be. That’s that on that. (Cw here for slavery mutilations) So back to the clear people. The mutilations they experience are: their tongue and hands are cut off. Why. Just why. I understand you have to make your ruling class cruel. You have to create this need for the characters that we are following to rebel and rise up against their oppressors. But this just seems ... stupid. Why would the ruling class cut the hands off ALL their slaves. Yes, we have real world examples of mutilation in slavery. But the mutilations "make sense" in the culturally relative context of the time period and from the oppressor's viewpoint. When I look at the transatlantic slave trade and see pictures of whip marks on backs, I understand it in context of:  the slaves were whipped to punish them or punish another slave. These were horrific mutilations but they could presumably heal and not interfere heavily with the work being done on a permanent basis. But if you cut off the hands of a transatlantic slave...then how do they pick cotton? Sugarcane? Tobacco? Unless accommodations are made how can they perform this work that has been deemed so essential to their oppressors that they crossed a sea to steal these people from their homelands? It doesn't make sense. I look at the history books and I see mutilations from the Congo, where yes, the hands were sometimes cut off of slaves. Some slaves. Not all slaves. Horrific, terrifying, and horrible but still showing that oppressors will not completely work against their own goals. They are going to be cruel; they are going to be the biggest losers of history, but they aren’t gonna completely fuck their whole operation over.

(Cw over for slave mutilation descriptions) In this book, the oppressive class have mutilated people they "need" to do essential work. We see the clear blood people doing household tasks, such as cooking and cleaning. We are then told that their oppressors...modify their houses. And tools. And kitchen equipment. Just so... these handless slaves can work. I'm sorry. That does not make sense. Why would an oppressor provide.... disability accommodations? Wouldn't the thing to do just be...not cutting their hands off in the first place??? And I know someone reading this might be like...you expect logic from oppressors, dear, sweet Peachy? That's cute! Well. Yes. Yes, I do. Oppressors do not always make sense in the real world, yes. People, like a certain billionaire who shan’t be named, espouse the raising of the birthrate all day then get mad when brown people in different countries have their birthrate go up. Because, what they really want is the white birthrate to go up. Poor white people in America often act against their own self-interest and vote for politicians that hate them and will cut their basic assistance and social services. These are just two quick examples to say that, no, I don't necessarily look for extreme logic in oppressors. But I look for basic logic. If you need something done, you don't cut the hands off every single one of your slaves. Basic. So, I find this book lacking research heavily, not just on the count of science but also into how oppression, riots, and revolutions work. So much of fantasy writing is based in our real world because human imagination only seems to stretch so far, ya know? When you write oppression in a fantasy book, it helps to look to real world oppression to guide you. Look towards real world revolutionaries and how they have operated throughout history. These are the points of research that could have really helped flesh out this books themes and made it much more enjoyable read. To that point: there's a lot of supplementary material here. Each chapter starts off with a verse from a song, or a story from a storyteller or an excerpt from some piece of literature in this world. This could've been cool, perhaps, but it just ended up coming off as a lazy storytelling device. Like whenever she wanted to introduce something, instead of weaving it into the narrative, we got whatever it was flatly stated in this world's Bible. Or this worlds newspaper. Or this world’s town crier. Hear ye, Hear ye! Amirite laydies? That leads into my pettiest point: THIS BOOK IS TOO GATDAM LONG. There is no reason for this book to be nearly 1000 pages. Like, trim the fat a little here. This book could've told the story it wanted to tell in 400 pages or less. There was no need to drag it out for over twice that. Also, entirely no need for this to be first in a trilogy. The plot was basic, I could see every twist coming from a mile away and pages were filled with descriptions of shit that had nothing to do with anything and didn't drive the plot forward. Frustrating ass book to read. Then the author shows utter lack of self-awareness as I read her saying on an interview that she was "economical" with her words. Economical. Nothing was economical about this book. She talks about editing being where the magic happens, yet the book was 1000 pages of comma mistreatment. She says in the same interview that she wrote the book in 3 perspectives yet multiple times we are given a 4th perspective. Jond’s. She didn’t even seem to remember she wrote multiple passages in Jond’s perspective. MORE ON HIS ASS RIGHT SOON. Mildly petty point 2a, sub-verse b and ¾: Typical rant here about exposition and too much of it. But the exposition causes the issue where what is told doesn’t match up with when we are shown something. For example. When fat characters are introduced, they are often described negatively. Lots of words and hidden jibes about how much they eat. Or their bodies are described super oddly. But then later in the book Sylah says in this Over-Expositiony way that she can’t believe! people are mean to Anoor about her weight because her curves are sooooooo beautiful. It’s like. Gentle fatphobia and then this loud, Twitter-esque, tweet- thread language explaining that fatphobia is wrong. But sis. You just engaged in fatphobia when you described Anoor 50 pages ago. My last point, which isn't petty, is that this book was heavily marketed as being f/f, and has a lesbian tag on Goodreads, but has very little f/f content. I’m gonna tread carefully here, because I’m gonna take a wild guess and say the Anoor character is the lesbian. If she isn’t though, that would only support my point further, but I’m unsure on that front. Yes, you can market something as f/f if your character(s) is bisexual, nobody is saying you cannot. But I really do not want to go into a book thinking I am getting the greatest f/f love story of all time and get...next to nothing. There are 9 sex scenes in this book. 7 are between a m/f. The male character is Sylah’s old friend Jond, who comes back from the dead into her life. The male character is not mentioned at all in the marketing, despite playing a heavy part in the story and at times having his pov seen as I said above with the author forgetting how many people’s pov she wrote in. This to me causes me to say that this is mis- marketing. If you market something heavily as f/f I do not want to see the main female character getting fucked by a man for over 3/4 of the book. Then have her sloppily get with the female character for about 50 pages and then break up and end the book broken up. Yes, I know this is a trilogy and that the plan is for 2 more door- stopping, full of too many GATDAM words books to come. I don’t care. This isn’t about the future; this is about the now. If I am told a book heavily features a f/f pairing then that’s what the fuck I wanna see. If not, don’t put the emphasis of your marketing on the f/f relationship. Advertise your books accordingly, because I’m sick of this shit. In conclusion this was a bad book with a decent premise. Similar to The Gilded Ones, there were a number of interesting ideas present that in the hands of a more skilled author might have been cool to read. But, as per the usual new releases, these cool concepts were plunked down in front of us unceremoniously with the author going: "See! Look at how cool this is!" With no further work done. I give it a 2 gentle fat phobias out of 5 advertisements your book is f/f when that doesn't even heavily feature in the story. We need to demand more from these recent authors because this half ass shit just isn't gonna cut it for me.