A review by frogggirl2
The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French

Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
There are a lot of issues around words being used/misused in this fantasy's world context with no definition.  "Castile" on pg. 16 is a region in Spain and has nothing to do with what's going on in the sentence - I assumed the author meant castle and this was a typo since the term is never defined in the world as a special term and there's no such thing as Spain here.  The term gets used over and over, and the problem never gets solved.  The last word of chapter two is "thicks" which has not been defined so there's no drama - if the author had just said the word "orc", then their imminent attack would have been an exciting end to the chapter.  

Almost all women are whores and rape is dropped casually into the middle of sentences that have nothing to do with it (ie, pg. 29).  The one female main character who isn't a whore gets stuff like, "... and honestly, Fetching, if your tongue isn’t licking my cock, I got no damn use for it” (from the leader of her tribe during battle, no less) (p.34).  This book is profoundly sexist (not just the characters) and it does not like or respect women.

I rarely DNF, but the world building, characterization and writing are just not on point.  And the rampant misogyny sucks. This was not worth the $1.99 I paid for it.


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