Vrinda Pendred's Reviews > Lord of Shadows

I somehow added the rest of the trilogy but not this one.

Read it years ago and it just irritated me so much that I guess I forgot even to acknowledge it had happened.

Rick Riordan recently tweeted something about getting messages complaining that he'd let an LGBT agenda take over his book, and suggesting that the plaintiffs needed to take a long hard look at themselves. I can't comment on his book, but I thought of this trilogy and I'll tell you what I hate about it so much: it's patronising and fake.

It isn't about having an issue with gay or trans characters. I really don't. It's about a person who is neither gay nor trans nor poly, filling up a book with these characters to the point of it being totally unrealistic and actually undermining the feelings attached to being stuck outside the majority - and writing about them in such a way that their ENTIRE personality is being gay or trans or poly. They have basically NO other characteristics. It's kind of like how you often get characters of foreign extract and that's their whole persona. The romance is then all about being gay or trans or poly, rather than just falling in love. It is in your face with every sentence and not remotely normalised, and I think it is written to appeal to woke hipsters rather than to actually increase acceptance.

'But Vrinda, you're not gay or trans or poly, so how can you comment?'

I AM autistic, with a history of debilitating OCD and Tourette's and ADHD, and PTSD - and I feel the same way about most books that feature characters who fall in those categories, too. This book ALSO features an autistic character, and again, I hate it - his neurosis and being gay are, like, ALL he is. Another great example is Stephen King's Holly Gibney. Oh my days, I HAAAAATE her. Isn't she brave?? And isn't she wonderful for dosing herself up to try to cure her personality?? Honestly, it's gross. All of it feels akin to calling disabled people 'special', and all of it is like trying to cash in on the latest trend - because I do feel that for a lot of people, things like autism or LGBT issues are just trendy, and true understanding is totally lacking.

To give contrast, Clive Barker is always slipping in gay characters. A crucial difference is that he's actually gay and writing from the heart. There's no song and dance about it - the relationships are just there, and presented in a way that assumes it's normal, and if you don't think it is, you'd better jump on the wagon quick because the story is moving and will not stop. I am perfectly happy reading one of his fairly graphic gay sex scenes, but this Cassandra Clare book just made me angrier with every page.

There's such a feeling of smug superiority in it, like if you don't like it, you must be a disgusting bigot. No - you just totally failed to integrate these characters into your story because you don't really understand what you're writing about. You're so so so deliberately making money off of subjects that really affect other people who I highly doubt will find any greater acceptance in society as a result of your quick cash story. It's similar to the way gay sex was thrown into the Game of Thrones TV adaptation - it felt like it was there to titilate and shock straight people. I heard plenty of GoT fans carry on calling male colleagues 'queer' as an insult, for example. These things don't help anything. They don't create change. They are not for me.