I want to start this out with something that I think is the most important thing to say about this book, before I even begin: I DO NOT FEEL THIS IS NOT A YA BOOK.

Parents, please don’t give this book to your younger teens without first being educated on the content and knowing what your teen can handle. I have no idea why this is marketed as teen, but I’d be pretty peeved if my 14- or 15-year-old picked it off a shelf and read it. I think the reasoning will be pretty clear as we go on.

In all honesty, this probably would have gotten a higher rating, but I felt downright lied to and misled by the fact that:

1. This feels not at all like YA (and I read YA because I enjoy the genre, versus what I would expect from an adult novel, when I’m in the mood to read those);

2. the summary gives no indication about the actual contents of the book, so I was completely caught unawares and it’s not at all what I was expecting.

Shall we start with aaaaall the content warnings? You might want to go get some coffee and make yourself comfortable for this one. It could take a while. There’s a lot of them.

I’ve developed a rating system for my content warnings for this. Since yes, it does need it, apparently.

* = mentioned in passing, not dwelled on
** = mentioned multiple times but not pervasive
*** = pervasive throughout the entire novel

Without further ado, the content warnings:

✦ Rape/sexual assault **
✦ Misogyny ***
✦ Self-harm/suicide *
✦ Mental abuse ***
✦ Animal cruelty*

I put the warning for animal cruelty just in case, but … this takes place in a medieval-ish setting, okay? People hunt, yeah? Sometimes that also involves turning animals into decorative pieces like rugs and throws. This was done accurately to the time period, and I saw no actual abuse that I can recall, so I assume this is what people are mostly referring to.

Phew, that’s a lot. If there were a reward for trigger warnings, I’m pretty sure this book would earn it.

Damsel is a dark fairy tale retelling, through and through, and it certainly earns the title. However, if you’re able to stomach all of that, it was more than worth the read.

*Thank you to Edelweiss and Balzer + Bray for an eARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review*

*All quotes are from an ARC copy and may not appear verbatim in the final version*

 

❧ The writing is gorgeous and evocative of a Brother’s Grimm fairy tale.

I loved this aspect. It was hard to get into at first, and there were times I stumbled through a passage, but for the most part, I thought Arnold did a fantastic job of painting a dark story that grew ever more sinister by the moment.

There were so many lovely passages or just simple wordplay that made the word geek in me super happy.

Some of it was a bit more obvious and heavy-handed, but the subtleties. Oh gosh, the subtleties were excellent.

❧ Ama’s character arc is glorious. As much as she annoyed me at the beginning, she really grew on me, and I was rooting for her by the end.

Oh, and how I did despise her to start with. She was little more than a limp noodle (and that is not a phallic reference, I promise). She had no personality and just blindly followed and did what she was told. I mean, also, she had no memory of anything before waking up in Emory’s arms, so … obvious problem is obvious. So I could forgive this, to some extent.

The more she found herself, the more Ama’s memories came back, little by little, and the two gradually built hand-in-hand, and I just loved the transformation her character underwent.

By the end, she was a character I could totally get behind, and I was sitting there yelling at the book:

What it boiled down to is that, at first, Ama did try very hard to play the role of the damsel in distress that was expected of her … she was just very bad at it, and she couldn’t quite figure out why.

Hint: because she had … wait for it … opinions. *GASP* Heretical, I know. Arnold does a magnificent job of setting up the world, though, and it’s obvious why it IS a problem in this society.

❧ Damsel unapologetically tackles problems that plague our society in a way that is sometimes heavy-handed but all too apropos, given recent events.

At the heart of the narrative, Damsel is a plea to expose the many facets of misogyny and encourage women to break out of the cycle of conforming, even if that’s just “always how things have been.”

While the medieval world in which Damsel takes place is almost unrecognizable with most modern society, there are elements that, taken individually, absolutely shine a light on modern cultures.

Remember that super long content warning when I started this? All of that is intentional. There will be no pulled punches here. Damsel takes the reader into the belly of the beast, so to speak, into a cyclical den of complacency and subjugation, where it’s inconceivable for a woman to even think to step out of the confines that have been established for her.

❧ I kept thinking I should DNF this, but I just couldn’t.

I kept thinking that I might as well go ahead and call it quits, but then I just had to know what happened. There would be something that happened that I thought, nope, this is where I draw the line. This is disgusting. But then there would be that little voice that said, BUT HOW DOES IT END?

Okay, it wasn’t a little voice. It was a very annoying, nosy voice with a megaphone. The point being regardless of parts of the story that maybe turned me off a bit with the content, Arnold told such a compelling story that not even those could make me put it down.

❧ You know that little gurgle, churn, clench thing your gut does when you read a book and the content makes you want to stab something or someone? In Damsel, all that uncomfortableness is intentional.

That’s sort of the point of all this. You’re meant to question everything. You’re meant to get mad at how Ama is treated, at the society that lets it happen, at the prince who owns the damsel, at everyone telling her to just behave and do what’s expected.

It’s so freaking easy to get mad at these things in the confines of a work of fiction, but Arnold is begging the reader to take it one step further, to go beyond the fictional world and ask, if I don’t think it’s okay for this character to do it, why does it still happen in my country?

I spent 90% of this book just shaking my Kindle, wanting someone to do something, say something, stop pretending it doesn’t exist. But in the end, as much as it frustrated me, I understand that’s the point. That’s exactly how some people in real life feel, and I’m assuming that little slice of empathy pie is what the author was going for.

❧ There’s 1,000% more “yards” in this than I expected, and … it’s a really bad euphemism.

It means penis, okay? We’re all adult-ish here, and if you’re not, fine, but I still expect you to know what a penis is, whether you personally possess one or not. Phallic references are hard (  … unintentional, I swear). I get it. I, however, was really not a big fan of “yard,” and it was used all the time. 

It’s basically never in his pants. What even is the purpose of pants in this world?! They’re obviously not being used correctly.

❧ There are several instances where the prose becomes repetitive, which I’m assuming was for effect, but really, it bugged the crap out of me.

This starts from the get-go. “Gray” is used something like 20 times in the first three-ish pages. It’s a lot. I get it: everything is gray. It’s dull and dreary, yes, let’s move on. There’s a dragon to be slain and a damsel to be rescued, okay? The grayness is the least of your worries.

The writing, when it wasn’t repetitive, was clear and descriptive, so I didn’t understand why it fell back on repetition. No, I got it the first time, with a pretty good mental image, thanks.

❧ There is not a single redeeming man in this, and that makes me sad, because it seems to paint, in pretty broad strokes, all men as either evil or complacent.

When Ama is not directly being belittled, abused, laughed at, or told to stay in her place by the myriad of men in this, then the few other scarce men she encounters simply turn a blind eye. That’s it. There’s no nuance or variation to the men in this. It’s pretty clear they’re all at fault.

❧ The book sort of just ends abruptly almost immediately after the climax, and the ending is … disturbing.

The suddenness irked me, because there was no denouement, no winding down, nothing. It was just boom, over. However, that sort of fit the story just fine, so it wasn’t a deal-breaker, and it didn’t make me angry or anything. Actually, I quite liked the ending. What I didn’t like was the confirmation of exactly how princes conquer the dragon.

From the very start of the book, I assumed what Prince Emory’s third weapon was and how he conquered the dragon, but I dismissed it, sure that I was wrong. And I was. It was similar, but somehow worse.

And dude, it was disturbing. This was a deal-breaker. I won’t go into detail because of spoilers, but I was not a fan. So there you go, I guess that’s my line. It turns out I do have one, after all.

❧ I feel like marketing Damsel as feminist is a teensy bit misleading.

The message is a feminist one. What the author is hoping you take away is absolutely feminist. But the actual story? Eh. The ending, perhaps, one could argue, is. But the rest? Not in my opinion.

Don’t go into this expecting any take-charge characters, strong women, feisty females, etc., because you’ll be sorely disappointed. Most of the book is spent telling women exactly where their place is, which is, of course, blindly accepted because that’s the way of it.

In the end, this is just semantics. It wasn’t what I expected in a feminist work, but I can see how it is a feminist work, so it’s six to one, half a dozen to the other. Just throwing this in here to point out that if this isn’t your brand of feminism, you might want to look elsewhere.

Have you read Damsel yet? What did you think of it? Also, just out of curiosity, what is your favorite euphemism?