Quarreling, They Met The Dragon, by Sharon Baker

This cover is accurate in pretty much every way except that Senruh, the pictured sex worker, would never look that awkward. At least I assume he wouldn't because almost everyone he meets hits on him.

On the weird terraformed planet Naphar, early colonists genetically spliced themselves with native mammals, producing two new races who are interfertile: the Rabu, who are very tall (I think this means human height), and the Kakano, who are half that height and can see the Veil (some kind of red atmospheric feature) and so see at night. In some places the Kakano rule the Rabu, but in the city where the book is set, it's the reverse. Senruh is mixed-race.

The sun's intense radiation is damaging to humans, and even the genetically engineered people can't eat animal meat on Naphar as it's impregnated with toxic heavy metals. They must eat human meat to survive as I guess there's no other protein sources. Also, there are sacred flying lizards.

The only cannibalism trope I like is this specific one: it's necessary for survival on a hostile alien planet. Also, flying lizards.

The book itself is strange and uneven. An author's note says she interviewed hustlers to get Senruh right, and he does come across convincingly as one. Everything around him, however, is totally batshit and extremely iddy though not necessarily iddy to me.

He spends the first part of the book as a kept boy to a rich woman who addresses him with such amazing epithets that honestly I'm reviewing this book just to share some of them:

"My unlettered he-lizard."

"My small frightened turtle."

"My moonstruck gift of the night."

"My sensitive little bazaar-scuttler."

"My over-vigorous jewel."

"My filth-smeared gem."

"My small craven lizard."

"My dingy scrap of heavenstone."

"My potent, squalid little morsel."

That's only about a third of them. If that.

This book has a LOT of sex, mostly some flavor of dubcon or noncon, and even more dubcon and noncon perving on Senruh. At one point he gets publicly gang-raped in the marketplace by four other slaves on their mistress's order, so, yeah, that kind of book.

Senruh ends up on the lam with a Kakano slave with whom he has a cute bickering buddies with sexual tension relationship.

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The ending had a neat surprise and a sweet closing image. The world was interesting but-- and I can't believe I'm writing this-- I wanted more cannibalism and less sex.

What is Realism?

I'm excerpting some comments from the discussion on my post about Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family series. Some context that's known to those of us in the subthread but isn't explicitly stated, is that Sydney Taylor's series about a Jewish family in turn of the century New York City is very autobiographical, to the point that the characters are not only based on her real family, but with one exception (the baby brother) keep their real names.

Lirazel wrote: "The writer of the autobiography talks about how much the children's market had changed between the 50s, when the first three books in the series were written) and the 70s, when Taylor wrote Downtown and Ella. Taylor's style and subject matter worked brilliant in the 50s, but by the 70s, publishers and children's librarians were looking for more issues-based fiction. Taylor's books had always kind of...smoothed over the uglier parts of growing up poor in early 20th century New York (in a way that reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder's tendency to do the same), and that just didn't really fly anymore by the 70s.

So from what I remember, the publisher wanted her to write something a little grittier, but she didn't want to alienate all the readers who had loved the original books that were gentler. That's why Guido was introduced--he could be suffering from poverty in a more realistic way, but it wouldn't "taint" the characters that were already beloved. I think it was phrased more gently than that, but that's the impression I got of why Downtown is so different than the previous three books."

Rachel wrote: "It's funny how we think of realism. The first three books are classics because emotionally, they're incredibly realistic. I remember experiencing those same emotions as a kid, even though the details of the circumstances were so different. Taylor had to have been very faithful to what it felt like to be a kid, because so many of us find the books so relatable.

Downtown has more gritty poverty, but to me it feels less real/true than the books that were less realistic about social issues, but more realistic psychologically."

This reminded me of the endless debate over what's "realistic" in fantasy novels loosely based on medieval Europe. The rape and subjection of women is often considered a keynote of realism. But widespread premature death due to disease is not considered a necessary thing to include for the sake of realism, even though that was at least as much of a fact of life. (Imagine Game of Thrones if Cersei, Jaime, Joffrey, Arya, and Ned had all died of cholera or plague in book one.)

Or, going back to the original example, which is more "realistic," the events and emotions that stood out in Taylor's memory when recalling her childhood, or the dire poverty that was all around her, but wasn't how she personally experienced her childhood?