#Plenty of people are perfectly happy to read stock stories with bad prose but someones trans or gay or etc

[docholligay]

Finished Song of Achilles and looked up your review. Fantastic write up. Hit on a lot of things I'd also felt including how Achilles somehow continues to feel close to us as the audience. It's frustrating but also kind of neat from my feeling sometimes that Patroclus is a bit selfish in his telling. He tells so much and yet seems to keep the core of Achilles possessively to himself.

I think one of the places this is most jarring for me though is when he goes from the Achilles that Odysseus comments may be too soft for war to the one we see by the end (seemingly unbothered by death not the honor stuff). It's not that it doesn't make perfect sense, it's just that I felt like I didn't actually watch the transformation. I suppose now I write it I'm reminded how little he actually saw most as individuals even as a boy so perhaps it was less of a transition anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You're why I ultimately decided to absolutely put it on my reading list so wanted to follow up a little. I did absolutely love it. I'm sad to be done reading it XD I'm glad you encouraged me to read it after I finished Circe 🧡

I'm so glad you liked it! Ultimately, i think I liked it a lot more than Circe, which doesn't surprise me as many of the things I love are already present in the base story. It's still a book I think is really fantastic and worth the read, and for those of y'all who love to read ~*queer*~ fiction, it is explicitly kiss on the lips homosexual kind of gay.

#Doc do you not like stories tht are under the umbrella or what? #not at all I love a good sad gay story dearly #but whenever I get hit with a 'queer stories!' rec it is almost always some middlin fantasy thing where a bunch of characters #fit into the QUILTBAG #and have dopey happy endings after gayly crying at each other #and that's...the point of the rec #so when someone's like 'it's a queer--' BUT IS IT GOOD??? is always my response #Plenty of people are perfectly happy to read stock stories with bad prose but someones trans or gay or etc #and I genuinely think that is their right! #but its not me and a lot of my relationship with that series of rec is p negative #coming out the gate with saying a book is a piece of identity fiction feels like asking one to forgive its faults #so i would never rec this as a queer book I would rec it as a GOOD FUCKING BOOK but #my experience is not universal but this is some Sarah Waters overlap between the two #Its gay and its good