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A review by thepoisonrain
The Saxon Shore by Jack Whyte
3.0
It was a solid read, but nothing particularly impressed me. A few things that didn't impress me:
- Thinly veiled homophobia. (Even if we're supposed to read the narrator as flawed, there wasn't enough delicacy in the writing to point the reader in that direction... he seemed to tackle a lot of tricky subjects, but then pull up on really addressing them.)
- Sometimes awkward writing about females. (It's worth mentioning that I think Whyte handled writing about females a lot better toward the end of the book, not sure why that is, but that moved it from a solid 2.5 stars to a 3.5.)
- All of the women who were competent also just so happened to be beautiful? And that always seemed to make them hero material more than whatever cool thing they were doing.
- Realizations through the protagonist about lepers/other races that were clearly meant to be novel. The moments where Merlin realized he was othering groups pointlessly/unfairly/to his own detriment were kind of over-explained/weren't particularly enlightening, even for a book written 15 years ago.
- Thinly veiled homophobia. (Even if we're supposed to read the narrator as flawed, there wasn't enough delicacy in the writing to point the reader in that direction... he seemed to tackle a lot of tricky subjects, but then pull up on really addressing them.)
- Sometimes awkward writing about females. (It's worth mentioning that I think Whyte handled writing about females a lot better toward the end of the book, not sure why that is, but that moved it from a solid 2.5 stars to a 3.5.)
- All of the women who were competent also just so happened to be beautiful? And that always seemed to make them hero material more than whatever cool thing they were doing.
- Realizations through the protagonist about lepers/other races that were clearly meant to be novel. The moments where Merlin realized he was othering groups pointlessly/unfairly/to his own detriment were kind of over-explained/weren't particularly enlightening, even for a book written 15 years ago.