Erotic Book Club (E.B.C) 2019

Speaker's Way (Feedback)

The chapters I read were 1-15, overall I thought the story was very interesting. However, my biggest con about the story was the vast amount of information provided at the beginning of the book and the over detailing throughout. While this did not deter me from reading it, it did feel like the scene was dragging on a bit. In the beginning, I had to force myself to read it a bit, because there was so much information. I felt the scenes would have been set up flawlessly without as much detail. I feel as though I would read more of her work because it is good. Once the story got going it was pretty good. I would suggest working on the detailing by doing so without the glossary (that really threw me for a loop). I felt like that could have been at the end or you could have the reader use context clues to determine what the object is.

~Jam

For me, this was an amazing story with extremely rich world-building that has been a pleasure to read, something different that many of the other books in the club. Although I haven't been able to read through the entire book yet, it isn't for the lack of desire to!

I have three pieces of feedback for consideration.

First, the story is quite heavily loaded upfront with concepts and glossary. It's a lot of mental load for the reader before they even start in You do a great job introducing the concepts and definitions within the story itself so I think this reference material may be better served to be put at the end of the book.

Secondly, I was a little disappointed that there weren't a lot of details on how they escaped that night. I think it's a great opportunity for some action and tension as the threat of being caught looms over them and could also be a great bonding moment as they dared to do this together. I would love to read more about their daring escape.

Third, and this is the most sensitive part about the feedback that I'm have been debating about putting in, so please take it with a bucket of salt and also please think of it as just a consideration. I have had previous discussions with academics about the topic of cultural appropriation in fiction and I have been torn about my own feelings about the Asian influences of the book. On one hand, it's like "hey, yay representation" and on the other hand, I feel like some of the parts of the culture have been borrowed and given different meanings. It took me a long time to figure out where my own head was at with it and I came to the realization that while I am comfortable with the actual story, all the imagery included in the book, from the cover to the reference images, was jarring to me as they mean completely different things to me that was at odds with the actual story. Perhaps just by taking some of the images out and taking another look at the cover may be sufficient, at least for me. You do a great job with descriptions themselves so I don't think explanatory images are necessary anyway.

Overall, I really did enjoy the story and look forward to reading more for sure. The world you've built is so realistic and is a great vehicle for the story itself. I'm excited to see how the two will change society.

~Pixie