Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

by Katherine Marsh

[nannah]

DNF @ 43%

I picked this book up at a resale store because the main character was an LP. Rarely have I ever found an LP protagonist . . . if ever, to be honest? And in YA fiction too! There was nothing stopping me from purchasing it!

Unfortunately, what I thought would be some swashbuckling adventure turned out to be a horrible, never-lightening tragedy of a novel that basically displayed every single act of violence that could happen to court dwarves in a historical setting (I'm not sure which centuries exactly), including

Book content warnings:
ableism
rape
fetishization of marginalized people (in this case LP)
torture & other violence against LP
slavery
- and probably more

It ended up making me very uncomfortable . . . that an able-bodied writer (is this the correct terminology for contrast with LP?) writing about a marginalized group she's not a part of, made her book so depressing and fit every tragedy she could in the book with so little happy moments. It's less a story and more an article on historical abuse against court dwarves.

I ended up reading halfway through until book one ended with something like "I never thought I would long for my home back at [the other abusive court]" and hinted at an even more abusive servitude. And nope. I just shut the book. The last thing I needed/wanted was an even more abusive detail of this kid's life by his oppressor's.

Though the experiences aren't the same, imagine a white person or a straight person writing a book about a black / gay person and making it about their oppressors torturing them? Solely about that (not that it hasn't . . . been done before . . . )? But as a marginalized person myself in many ways, my stomach couldn't handle it.

This book might have a happy ending far ahead, but I just don't want to go through all the struggle to get there. One half is all I can take.