A review by ohmage_resistance
Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
  • The first female high mage and her marginalized immigrant lab assistant do magical research and deal with some dark realizations about their society.
  • I really liked this one. I saw the twist coming from the first few chapters. It did make the beginning a bit slower, although I had fun trying to figure out what was really going on with certain details. After the twist was revealed though, the emotional fallout was really well written and felt realistic. Also, that ending was extremely satisfying. I wasn’t sure if Wang could wrap the entire plot up in one book, but it worked out very well. On the downside, it could be a bit info dumpy in places, and it’s generally pretty dialogue heavy, although neither one of these bothered me.
  • Although feminism isn’t the only theme in this book, it’s still a major one. ML Wang takes feminism in a cool direction. Most popular feminist books I’ve read either go in a girlboss power fantasy direction and/or they are female rage stories. This one was interesting in that it was a female rage story, but the rage was more for a marginalized racial group than purely about sexism, although both play into the same system of oppression. It's also a specific critique of white girlboss feminism. I also really liked the commentary about women in STEM. The main character isn’t perfect, she has internalized misogyny at times, and her ambition isn’t always a nice. This book also deeply understands how women are shamed for showing emotion, wanting things, having pride, and being selfish in a way that men/male scientists are not. At the same time, it does question if being proud and selfish (the peak of male power) is something that women should really aspire towards.
  • I also really liked the themes about being part of a marginalized racial group. There’s commentary on racism, immigration, assimilation, and colonization, even if there’s no one to one real world parallel. These were just as much as a focus as the themes about feminism, and I think both worked really well together. Both themes could be a bit on the nose at times, but I think having them grounded in the experiences of the characters really helped them feel more impactful.
  • I liked all of the characters and though they were well written. Sciona was definitely not an admirable person in a lot of ways, and although she got a little better, she still stayed flawed. That being said, I think these were all put into context of why Sciona turned out to be that way and how it compares when we see male characters have those same traits. Thomil, Sciona’s lab assistant, was really cool, and I especially liked his relationship with his niece Carra. Now I kind of want to read Babel to compare these two books.

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