DNF: About two hours into a twenty-two-hour audiobook.

I don't know if any of you have read Ann Leckie's excellent essay about representation in SF/F, but here it is: It’s not a real heart, it’s a real artificial heart. Read it and come back; it's short.

Basically, I'm humming along enjoying the politics and worldbuilding and murder mystery in a semi-sunken NYC, and then I get punched in the face by sexism. Then I go a chapter or two, and BAM! Punched in the face again. They're not even hard blows, they're just persistent, and really irritating. It's frequently implied that female characters are using sex and/or their good looks to get things. The only romance plot is an incredibly male-gazy one (which I would put red gold on turning out to be the woman using sex to get things). Women's attractiveness is assessed, but men's isn't, not even by the female point of view characters. Oh, and there's fat shaming for the non-skinny (and skinny = pretty) women.

I want to like this book. Well, I want to scavenge this setting for fan fic anyway, but it's really just reminding me why I don't read SF/F by men very much. I am probably going to bail unless someone tells me it picks up. The audiobook is very well produced, and it seems a shame to abandon it. But twenty more hours!

It turns out life is too short.