Those Beyond the Wall

Those Beyond the Wall, by Micaiah Johnson

This review has to go one of two ways: either I explain in detail what underlying political themes are created out of the plot and characters and prose in Those Beyond the Wall, and why those themes contradict all the platitudes these characters and plot are dressed up in, or, I explain why I don't like to write bad reviews.

I don't really even have a label on this blog for bad reviews. I almost always stop reading a book if I hate it, and those few that slip by me (if, for example, a book seems like it might be setting up its protagonist and narrator as an unreliable narrator who experiences catastrophic worldview failure and transforms into something unrecognizable and new, right at the end of the book), if I still hate them at the end, I don't exactly want to promote them. So, while I know that bad reviews get clicks, that readers like snark and critique and destruction, I almost never have an opportunity to write one, and even when I do have the opportunity I don't like to take it.

I especially don't like to write bad reviews for books written by marginalized authors, and Micaiah Johnson is marginalized an at least a couple of axes. Marginalized authors routinely get marked down on the big review sites by people offended that their books have boys kissing or people noticing racism or girls having opinions. Even well-meaning readers are often more strict with marginalized authors and more vocal when disappointed. It's the curse of high expectations in those cases: you're one of us, how could you get it wrong? Or, more perniciously, I imagined a book by a trans man as being like A, and you wrote B, and I'm so upset.

So, generally, I leave one star higher a rating on a book by a marginalized author than I would on a book by a non-marginalized author, just because that feels fair. Lots of people drop stars, so I add one to even it out.

But, one star higher than no stars is still just one star, which is still damage done to an author who could theoretically go on to write interesting things if the industry gives her the chance, so I'm having real trouble with this one. In the end, on goodreads, I didn't give it a star rating, and left a review just saying that I'd read it and nothing else. Here, it's not like I have regular readers, and I won't be promoting this post on social media or linking it to the author's website or anything like that, so I'll just say that All Copaganda Is Bad, even if you put lines about how cops are evil in the mouth of your abusive cop protagonist. ACAB means all cops, no matter what lines you write them about social justice.