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Ayanna

Reader's Discretion Advised

...this confuses me. So...it's like tumblr...for books?

Either way, I'm mainly on Goodreads. I do occasionally come here, and also do periodically import my shelves from GR here, but GR is a more sure bet for contacting me.

Beginnings: Liberation (Love is Always Write)

Beginnings: Liberation (Love is Always Write) - Alessandra Ebulu It's not bad, but at the same time, quite odd/awkward.

The ostensible features are there, but the cultural aspects aren't quite right. It's like everyone is LARP'ing this story out, except all of the western hints make it seem more like cultural appropriation than anything.

I'm not exactly an expert in ancient Greek culture, but people being disgusted by public male kissing? I thought Greece was all about the male-love and women were pretty much for the convenience of breeding. Not to as far an extent as I made it sound just now, but I'm pretty sure the Greeks were all for homoeroticism.


It almost reads like a tourist/tour guide's Guide to Ancient Greece.

"...and over there on the left, we have the Parthenon, temple of Athena Parthenos - the virgin, you see. It was consecrated in 843 AF - After the Fall of the titans - and was the result of a battle for the patronage of Athens between Athena and Poseidon. And over there, we can see a couple of temple maidens, wearing the white of dedicates. Their unshorn hair shows that they're not yet dedicated. Now, here we have the Propylaea, the path leading up to the Parthenon. Inside, of course, we have the great statue of Athena..." blah, blah, blah.

The relationship...sucked. There was nothing there, no heat, no passion. Doesn't help that I don't really get a sense of who the characters are. I think the author muddled the waters too much by making it a menage. It plants that little seed that maybe the MC of the long and incomprehensible name is perhaps really that expendable after all.
It was too obviously the author trying to accomplish this end and making it so instead of cultivating it and letting it blossom. To reference a Chinese proverb (I really don't know how to translate it/what the English version is, so I'll just describe it): the author couldn't wait for her crop to grow, so she sped up the process by pulling them, to help them grow taller (regardless of the fact that pulling on plants pull the roots out of the soil and cause them to die).

The "moral" made little to know sense to me. I suppose I'm okay with the gods coming off as hypocritical, self-righteous pricks who live by multiple standards, but really, I'm not. I wanted it to make more sense other than a glorified version of "because I said so."

So, ultimately, I was rather disappointed with it, even considering it was a DRitC story.