Stolen Tongues: Novel Review
Hello reader and hello 2022! I hope you had a lovely New Year’s! I stayed in and made scallops for dinner and watched the 1999 classic, The Mummy — so, all in all, a great night!
This week I’ll be hosting a special series of interviews with some talented authors, so make sure to keep an eye out for those, starting on Thursday!
This review has some serious spoilers, I can’t really write my review correctly without explaining some things so you have been warned!
The Author
I tried my best, I really did, but it’s impossible to find a good picture of Felix Blackwell online! I took this from his Facebook page so, there ya go!
The most interesting thing about me is, ironically, that I am remarkably boring. I’ve never had a drink. I’m claustrophobic. I listen to relaxing video game soundtracks and pretentious prog rock.
– Blackwell’s website
Blackwell started out writing for Reddit’s NoSleep forum and from there has published a collection of tales called The Cold People, and two novels: Stolen Tongues and In The Devil’s Dreams. He has also announced that Stolen Tongues has been picked up for a film adaptation.
The Novel
High up on the windswept cliffs of Pale Peak, Faye and Felix celebrate their new engagement. But soon, a chorus of ghastly noises erupts from the nearby woods: the screams of animals, the cries of children, and the mad babble of a hundred mournful voices. A dark figure looms near the windows in the dead of night, whispering to Faye. As the weather turns deadly, Felix discovers that his terrified fiancée isn’t just mumbling in her sleep – she’s whispering back.
– Blackwell’s website
Stolen Tongues was originally a contest-winning story on Reddit’s horror community NoSleep.
The Review
This book took a while to process. I even went back and forth on writing a review for it. I’m going to dive right in though.
Obviously modern authors face a difficulty when it comes to representing cultures that aren’t their own. And obviously I don’t expect Caucasian authors to only write white characters (and I am not assuming Blackwell’s ethnicity, but he does say that he is non-Native in his afterword) because that’s not the solution either. But making sure you represent a different culture and race correctly and fairly is important and, to me, Blackwell missed the mark.
Here come spoilers, so beware!
Blackwell’s characters (which are based on him and his fiancée) go up to a cabin and they encounter a creature lifted straight out of Native American lore. In the novel, the protagonist reaches out to a few Native American characters to help him.
All three Native American characters end up dead.
It wasn’t really how Blackwell represented the characters that bothered me, it was that the white characters are shown to know nothing about the creature that is hunting them, but somehow manage to fumble their way to victory, while their advisors (the Native Americans) all fall victim. It just felt…off. Like these Native Americans were just meaningless fodder for the protagonist’s journey to save his fiancée.
In addition, the protagonist’s fiancée is often described by the protagonist as “helpless” and such. In fact, she does nothing to try and help herself, she has no agency, she’s just flat and useless. I wasn’t impressed.
Then, in the conclusion of the story, it is revealed that all of this was caused by the fact that the fiancée was so traumatized by the loss of a stillborn brother that she repressed her trauma and that somehow made her special to the creature. So everyone had to die for some chick’s inability to process grief after decades.
In the end, these issues were too big for me to ignore. It felt like I was reading some weird daydream of a man rescuing his helpless princess.
The best part of the book was the random intro where he talks about a weird experience he had with his friend’s parrot (no, not like that!)
So, while Stolen Tongues had a great concept, I feel like Blackwell really missed the mark on how to handle the non-white characters and female characters.
1/10
x PLM
