Damsel by Elana K. Arnold: A Fairy Tale with Fangs

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I honestly can't give this book a rating. I just can't. It has so many triggers that there is no way I can label them all, but sexual assault, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and animal cruelty are among some of the triggers. This is a VERY graphic book and quite controversial for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's marketed to the YA community.

This book is a very dark, very graphic, very feminist take on the ORIGINAL (not the Disney story, the original tale, the one with rape) tale of Sleeping Beauty. In this very patriarchal fantasy world, a prince, in this case, Prince Emory, must travel to a faraway land upon the death of a king, slay a dragon, rescue a damsel, and marry the damsel, who he names Ama (for a disgusting reason, I might add) and who has no memory of her prior life before being rescued by the prince. Ama is supposed to accept that she is a damsel, going to marry a queen, and going to give birth to a son who will repeat the cycle. But Ama asks questions, Ama questions her submissive role; basically, she refuses to accept this which makes life dangerous for her, particularly as she discovers that Prince Emory is, forgive my French, a piece of shit. Actually, he's far worse than a piece of shit. Anyways. I have a lot to say about this book.

So.

Let's start with what I did like about this book. The writing is beautiful and lyrical and Elana K. Arnold is clearly a very talented writer. I also really appreciated the feminist message of this book, and that it's about female anger, and female power, and about questioning and refusing conformity, and about being a woman in a man's world. Here is a note from the author, and I think it does an excellent job of describing the meaning of this book: "Damsel is about waking up female in a man’s world. It’s about power, and abuses of power by powerful men. It’s about secrets. It’s about pride, and anger, and action. I put my anger into this book, and I surprised myself with what my anger and I created."


What I didn't like was how graphic this book was. I felt that this book was overly graphic and it didn't need to be. There are some descriptions in this book that are just unnecessary, and that are in no way needed to keep the book effective, particularly as it is marketed to YA readers.

**SPOILER ALERT** When I say graphic, I mean really, really graphic. Graphic in that a prince rapes a dragon through the wound that he made with his sword in order to turn it into a human woman!

And this is really dumb, but the fact that "yard" is used in place of the word "penis" (or other normal words) really bothered me. Like, just say penis or dick, don't say yard!

But my biggest issue with this book is that reading it just wasn't an enjoyable experience. I did feel like that was kind of the point, based on the subject matter, so I can't fault the book for that, and that's one of the reasons I'm not giving it a rating. That being said, there are plenty of books that deal with tough subjects, such as The Female of the Species and Moxie, that deal with tough subjects but that I still really enjoyed reading. Despite this, I still think the book is doing what needs to be done: discussing uncomfortable subjects and forcing readers to face uncomfortable truths.


On that note, I don't have a problem with this book being marketed towards YA readers and teen girls (though teen boys should read this too!); in fact, I think that it's important that this book be available for teen girls. I completely understand that there is an age in which people are simply to young to read certain books, no matter what they're dealing with or how "mature" they may be.  And I'd say this book is best for high schoolers, so I guess ages 14 and up. BUT, while Damsel is sexually explicit, it is less sexually explicit than, say, A Court of Mist and Fury, or really anything written by Sarah J. Maas for that matter. And while book lovers (including myself) do generally express the fact that while it is marketed as YA, it is priced the same way a YA book is, it is sold in the YA sections of bookstores, the content is akin to that of an adult book. But despite this, I haven't seen the anger surrounding the marketing that I have seen towards Damsel. People really seem to be angry that this is considered a YA book, and I'm just trying to point out the hypocrisy, because that anger is not present surrounding ACOMAF, which is MORE explicit than Damsel. Moving on. Is it "inappropriate"? Yes. But guess what? This (albeit to the extreme) is the kind of things that teen girls are dealing with every day. And the fact they-that we- are dealing with it, is inappropriate and unacceptable. So, there needs to be a platform for teenage girls to understand and discuss this subject matter.

All in all, this is an explicit, graphic, dark, gory take on Sleeping Beauty, and please, please be aware that there are a great deal of triggers, so tread lightly.

XOXO,

Isabella

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