Review by Robyn_original -- Chasing The Red Queen

[Robyn_original]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Chasing The Red Queen" by Karen Glista.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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Donja Bellanger, a teenage girl still traumatized by her father’s death, is forced to leave her home and friends when her mother remarries and uproots the family to live with her new husband and his daughter.

One night, while out at an exclusive club with her new step-sister Makayla, Donja catches the eye of a centuries-old Iridescent ,Torin Mancini, who feels irresistibly drawn to her. At the same time, another creature who has been ruthlessly murdering and raping Chippewa girls in his search for someone matching Donja’s genetic makeup, picks up her blood’s distinctive scent .

What follows is a tale of violence and seduction as Donja and Torin try to stay a step ahead of Donja’s stalker, who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of her.

Karen Glista’s Chasing the Red Queen has an interesting premise in that it combines Chippewa folklore with vampiric legend. I did enjoy this inclusion of Native American lore as it was different to the usual stock-standard vampire romance novel. Iridescents are not technically vampires, although they share an overwhelming number of attributes, but ancient spirits. The potential to be a compelling fantasy-horror romance is there, but it falls short in several disappointing ways.

Donja, who is 17, comes across as much younger - more like 14. She is obsessed with being goth and the persecution that she believes comes from dressing that way. She paints black tears on her face to signify her sadness over her father’s death, even after she has an out of place makeover session with her rich step-sister, in which she changes from goth to, in her own words, “gothiglam”. She is emotionally damaged, and several times she mentions how mentally unstable she is. She is also easily influenced, as illustrated by her willingness to immediately quit smoking and change her style as soon as her new step-sister dubs smoking “gross” and insists on a makeover for her - even though just a few pages ago she couldn’t go a few minutes without lighting up a cigarette or lamenting how goth is “who she is” and other people are just judgemental .

All this would be fine, as all well-rounded characters should have flaws, if it wasn’t for the fact that she is coerced and seduced into a relationship with a much older man. The relationship is meant to read as sexy and romantic, but all it does it leave a feeling of discomfort at the imbalance and blatant manipulation of an immature, vulnerable girl.

Donja starts the book as a fairly innocent 17 year old virgin, but the author makes sure to let her have her 18th birthday so at least things between Donja and Torin are kept “legal” . Even so, the amount of girls having underage relationships with much older men , and the issues with consent - of which almost every relationship in this book seems to have, including Donja and Torin’s - are extremely discomforting. There are even full grown male Iridescents that fall in “love” with girls of 12 and 13 years old, and one stalks the young girl for life, until the girl grows up and finally acquiesces after a lifetime of fear of being followed and forced to marry this supernatural, much older creature. Even Donja and Torin’s relationship is driven more by her fear of being raped and murdered by the main villain, and her family being murdered, than actual love.

There is a pervasive undercurrent of sexism throughout the book. Women are mostly referred to as “females”, except for when being spoken about possessively - Torin refers to Makayla as “your woman” when speaking to his friend Gage, and in another instance, “my woman” when referring to Donja. When they get married, the women’s only vows are to “submit as consorts”.

There is not one woman with any sort of power in this book. Women are pursued by the men, and submissiveness and subordination are mentioned several times. In any battle scene, the men fight while the women cower or cry. I lost count of the amount of times a woman “simpered”, “purred” or “screeched”. Female Iridescents don’t feature much, except in conversation about mating or when brutally murdered. Women are basically just helpless sex , blood and baby machines.

It goes without saying that reading a fantasy novel requires some suspension of disbelief. But there are still aspects that need to be believable within the world created.

The relationships in the book completely lack believability and depth. The new relationships she forms with Makayla and Torin progress too quickly and to a level of intimacy that is frankly strange in such a short amount of time, and seem insincere. I found myself not caring much about what happened to any of the characters as they are all quite one-dimensional. The plot also takes some wild twists which seem very out of place and sudden.

The storyline starts out as a murder mystery, with Torin as a lead detective, but then takes a turn towards almost being a ghost story when Donja’s family’s new house is old, run down, isolated and creepy- complete with it’s own tale of haunting. These ideas are then mostly discarded as we progress to a supernatural action book with lots of violence and blood and some torrid sex scenes.

There are gratuitously graphic scenes and themes which I think the book would be better without, and too many mentions of Torin smelling the “decaying semen” left on the rape victim’s bodies, as well as the numerous references to Iridescents smelling women’s menstrual blood. Much of this seems to be included only for shock value, and is tediously repeated throughout, just in case you missed it the first time.

The repetition doesn’t stop at the taboo subjects - certain phrases are used with painful frequency, such as Donja’s “dark locks” and Torin’s “thick lips”.

The book starts with Donja still in her hometown, and this introduction is tedious and far too drawn out. Understandably the author is trying to convey the devastation of Donja leaving her friends and first love behind, but this could have been done with less superfluous scenes and details. Several chapters are spent in the beginning trying to convey how close she is to her best friend; yet her friend is completely forgotten about as soon as Donja replaces her with Makayla, and never mentioned again.

There are too many irregularities in the language and writing used. In one sentence, the characters will be speaking in a formal, slightly dated way - as is often the case in novels with characters that have lived several hundred years. But in the next sentence, the same person thinking or speaking will use slang or informal speech . For example, “Donja smiled and it was almost genuine for truth be known, she was happy for them. Kinda”

There are numerous grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors and it is plain that this book was not professionally edited. The sentence structure leaves a lot to be desired, with an abundance of run-on sentences. Throughout the book, far too many comma splices are used, ruining the flow of the reading. An example of this is, “Her heart hammered, my God, she had for many years, dreamed of visiting Mackinac Island so that she could see, first hand, the Grand Hotel from Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.” It almost seems as if the author, when unsure about how to rectify an awkward sentence, simply threw in a handful of punctuation and hoped for the best. There are also many times where words and punctuation marks are left out, such as “grabbed her hand and pulled into the dancers” (the sentence is missing the word “her”), and “What’s wrong honey, you look down” (a question mark is missing). These errors detract immensely from the flow of the book.

On the whole, Chasing the Red Queen may have had some potential with its somewhat interesting ideas, but the disturbing relationship dynamics, inherent sexism, weak writing and lack of editing mean that I can only award this book 1 star out of 4 . It starts out as what seems to be a YA novel, but I would never recommend a young adult read this. It contains themes of rape and violence, pedophilia, violence, abuse and suicide - which is addressed far too casually, with the implication that depression and suicidal ideation can be fixed by getting a new best friend or lover. The sexism is also something that doesn’t need to be promoted in today’s society, and trying to pass off manipulative and predatory relationships as romantic and sexy would be extremely damaging to a developing mind. Some adults may enjoy this as a guilty pleasure or if they enjoy themes of domination and women’s subservience, but I wouldn’t suggest this book myself.

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Chasing The Red Queen
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Like Robyn_original's review? Post a comment saying so!

[paigeosmond]

This review shows the positive and negative parts of the book. The review is eloquently written and is not biased towards the writing and expresses valid points for and against the writer.

[Robyn_original]

This review shows the positive and negative parts of the book. The review is eloquently written and is not biased towards the writing and expresses valid points for and against the writer.

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!