Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - The Fervor

This book made me sad and angry and disheartened, but I’m glad to have read it. “Farewell to Manzanar” is extent of my school-sponsored education on Japanese internment, so getting another (clearly altered for fiction) view into things definitely gave me a starting point for googling. I think it teases some supernatural elements but ultimately this is a book about internment, white supremacy, and the fact that the minority-eating machine that is American society makes no exceptions.

Complicit white people by the thousands watched as their neighbors were dragged to internment camps. America set up the idea of the model citizen— do this, worship that, wear this, buy this— then pulled that rug out from under certain people’s feet as soon as jobs and resources were scarce. No matter how hard anyone at Minidoka tried to be model citizens, to not “resist”, etc. they were treated as sub-human by their guards, the scientists, and the rest of America. They felt they had to make themselves smaller to earn their rights back, to no avail, and it’s maddeningly sad. I doubt the term existed back then but it’s respectability politics hard at work, making POC turn the hate inflicted on them towards themselves instead of striking back at the actual source (white people).

The most galling & unfortunately accurate thing about this story is that

in the end Meiko is still looked at as the solution to what is clearly the American Governments giant fuck up.

POC, especially women, are often burdened with the responsibility to lead their own liberation and everyone else’s. White men, white women, and even POC men often wait for these women to take a stand before they find the courage to do so; an incredibly frustrating & nearly inevitable phenomena, then and now.

Meiko & her daughter deserve $10 million cash and to be left the fuck alone.

Pacing was a tad slow but picked up in the middle, and I liked the narrative style. THATS how you do an alternating timeline (im looking at you, Rin Chupeco)

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limina's review against another edition

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I'll get back to the one eventually.

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amandalorianxo's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I immensely enjoyed the different side of WW 2 we rarely often get in fictional books around this time period. I’m speaking about the Japanese experience of being in internment campus during the early 1940’s post Pearl Harbor. This novel combines realism with Japanese mythology and some horror elements infused with some real experiences of xenophobia and even the fear of an epidemic. If you haven’t gotten the chance to pick up this April ‘22 release, I highly recommend checking this out for a diverse outlook on what WW 2 was like for those who called America home in spite of the rest of the world viewing them from a different lens.

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magellen's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Timely and well tied to our present, The Fervor echoes our current denialist attitude about illness, othering, and white nationalists in america. Katsu turns a historical mirror on us and demands we look, be uncomfortable in our complicity and our ignorance, and do better.

<spoilers>the supernatural elements drop off sharply towards the end in a way that's somewhat disappointing, but ties in to the fact that while the illness is exacerbating rage, the real monster is intolerance and racism and white fragility. On one hand it's sort of mask off the fear to it's real source, on the other damn dude I wanted a spider demon.</spoilers>

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ten_telegrams's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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archaicrobin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is my first book by Alma Katsu, and while I felt The Fervor was a bit repetitive and dragged on at times, I still enjoyed what the author was trying to accomplish. Meiko and her daughter Aiko are being held at a Japanese internment camp in Minidoka Idaho while her husband is off fighting the war as a pilot. Things are horrific at the camp but everyone there does their best to be what they call “good Japanese” in hopes of laying low and being spared the cruelty that the racist white peoples are capable of.

Despite being amicable, Meiko and Aiko are soon torn apart as a strange illness rampages through the camp, and it is soon revealed that this outbreak is not an accident. Katsu does an excellent job of tying in history and fantasy, while still managing to comment on the dangers of nationalism and white supremacy. It’s devastating to see what Meiko and Aiko are forced to deal with simply because they are Japanese, and even more devastating to know that this kind of racism is still around. That people today are following disgusting rhetoric like this in todays age. If you don’t understand why terms like “kung fu flu” and other derogatory terms for Covid spread by the disease that is Trump are problematic and disgusting, then pick up this book and you’ll see why.

While I do wish this was more supernatural and had more Yokai or Japanese lore, I do love that Katsu wrote a book that’s not only historical, but interesting, and provides a marginalized perspective.

I look forward to reading more by Alma Katsu in the future

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