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mme_hardyA decade or so ago, I learned the fandom phrase, "This is not my beautiful cake," meaning "I get that this is important to you, but it's not for me." A bit later than that, as an RWA member, I learned the phrase "I don't think I'm your reader," meaning "Here's my critique, but given that I don't resonate with the book, you may want to ignore it."
Well. I don't think I'm this beautiful cake.
The Good Luck Girls is set in a dystopian Old West --but I repeat myself. The world is divided between dustbloods, who don't cast shadows, and fairbloods, who do. This is a not-at-all-heavy-handed metaphor for American chattel slavery. "Others had been sent to Arketta on reeking prison ships from the colonies. Dustbloods, they were called. They looked just the same as ordinary, fair-blood folks, except that they couldn't cast a shadow. The first dustbloods had had their shadows ripped away as part of their punishment, and their children had been born without them." As I recall, the "does a person cast shadows" issue doesn't appear in NPC encounters later.
Poor families often sell their daughters -- never sons, at least not in the text -- into Welcome Houses (bordellos). The daughters work as daybreak girls (servants) until they reach age sixteen, at which point they become sundown girls/Good Luck Girls (sex workers), working for room and board. Good Luck Girls age out at 40, after which they're thrown out. Children sold into the Welcome Houses are mentally tortured by Raveners until they are broken; they are spayed; they are marked with tattoos, "favors", that burn when covered by makeup or clothing. The girls and women are prisoners. They are also deliberately addicted to sorrow-killing drugs that destroy the mind.
In the first chapter, and only that chapter, our viewpoint character is Clementine, who is about to experience her Lucky Night (three guesses). Instead of going quietly, she clonks her brag over the head with a slag lamp, killing him.
Thereafter, our viewpoint character is Aster, Clementine's older sister. All the girls in this particular Lucky House are named after flowers, although I think the author may have confused the citrus "clementine" with the flower "columbine". Aster rescues her sister from the inevitable murder prosecution; the two escape, along with Tansy, Mallow, and Violet, the last a fairblood Good Luck Girl who has been the madam's enforcer up to this point.
They mean to escape across the plains to the place where Lady Ghost can remove their favors, freeing them to rejoin the general population without fear of being identified as escapees. But it's all so joyless. I mean, yes, I'm reviewing a YA book about dystopian teens fleeing sex slavery at the risk of death or recapture. This is not going to be a laugh riot. But if I contrast (say) The Hunger Games, there are lots of individual incidents of comfort, interest, and satisfaction. If I contrast Holes, there are enormous quantities of fuligin-black humor. In The Good Luck Girls? There are just women being miserable for pages on pages on pages, often having flashbacks to times when they were even more miserable.
It's a very unhappy book, the journey toward the promised (ish) land is grueling, and the final arrival is both pat and disappointing. If you like dystopias, there are more engrossing ones.
Well. I don't think I'm this beautiful cake.
The Good Luck Girls is set in a dystopian Old West --but I repeat myself. The world is divided between dustbloods, who don't cast shadows, and fairbloods, who do. This is a not-at-all-heavy-handed metaphor for American chattel slavery. "Others had been sent to Arketta on reeking prison ships from the colonies. Dustbloods, they were called. They looked just the same as ordinary, fair-blood folks, except that they couldn't cast a shadow. The first dustbloods had had their shadows ripped away as part of their punishment, and their children had been born without them." As I recall, the "does a person cast shadows" issue doesn't appear in NPC encounters later.
Poor families often sell their daughters -- never sons, at least not in the text -- into Welcome Houses (bordellos). The daughters work as daybreak girls (servants) until they reach age sixteen, at which point they become sundown girls/Good Luck Girls (sex workers), working for room and board. Good Luck Girls age out at 40, after which they're thrown out. Children sold into the Welcome Houses are mentally tortured by Raveners until they are broken; they are spayed; they are marked with tattoos, "favors", that burn when covered by makeup or clothing. The girls and women are prisoners. They are also deliberately addicted to sorrow-killing drugs that destroy the mind.
In the first chapter, and only that chapter, our viewpoint character is Clementine, who is about to experience her Lucky Night (three guesses). Instead of going quietly, she clonks her brag over the head with a slag lamp, killing him.
Thereafter, our viewpoint character is Aster, Clementine's older sister. All the girls in this particular Lucky House are named after flowers, although I think the author may have confused the citrus "clementine" with the flower "columbine". Aster rescues her sister from the inevitable murder prosecution; the two escape, along with Tansy, Mallow, and Violet, the last a fairblood Good Luck Girl who has been the madam's enforcer up to this point.
They mean to escape across the plains to the place where Lady Ghost can remove their favors, freeing them to rejoin the general population without fear of being identified as escapees. But it's all so joyless. I mean, yes, I'm reviewing a YA book about dystopian teens fleeing sex slavery at the risk of death or recapture. This is not going to be a laugh riot. But if I contrast (say) The Hunger Games, there are lots of individual incidents of comfort, interest, and satisfaction. If I contrast Holes, there are enormous quantities of fuligin-black humor. In The Good Luck Girls? There are just women being miserable for pages on pages on pages, often having flashbacks to times when they were even more miserable.
It's a very unhappy book, the journey toward the promised (ish) land is grueling, and the final arrival is both pat and disappointing. If you like dystopias, there are more engrossing ones.
