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It was amazing?

Admittedly I love sarcastic female leads with devastating one-liners, but I really liked this book. It's a fictional take on an episode in Patricia Highsmith's life, when she was anonymously writing low-grade comics while penning what would become Strangers on a Train, followed by The Price of Salt, later renamed Carol.

The muted color palette effectively captures the grayness of Patricia's life, between her boring jobs and the rest of the world telling her she should stop being a lesbian. An occasional pop of orange signals a rare moment of excitement, and I love how Hannah Templer renders shadows in the thriller scenes, or how she mimics old comic books style to illustrate Highsmith's stories.

There's also a little mise en abyme here, that makes us realize just how far we've come since then: the story shows a lesbian writer in the 1950s, struggling to sell a novel with lesbian main characters that get a happy end at a time when putting your name on a comic book would be career suicide. And now in 2023 we get to read about it in a comic book crafted by two queer women, that features a problematic queer lead and won an Eisner award this year.

I had a hard time buying into the initial premise of the book: since the Knights of Hyperion murdered the Moon Goddess, a dozen years ago, the souls of the dead have been haunting the streets and may kill anyone who bleeds. Fish, or food in general, has become increasingly difficult to find. But it's treated as something that happened, whereas it's very much something the head of the main religion ordered, for reasons that only become clear near the end of the book. And people keep worshiping Hyperion without questioning his Knights' actions. If it were me, I think I would be ANGRY. (You could probably write a story about how some religious leaders made their followers' life difficult for selfish reasons and how these followers kept on believing in them, but that's not what Dark Moon, Shallow Sea is about.)

The first half of the book is a bit of a slog, not bad enough to drop the book immediately, but not good enough to actively enjoy the read. Also, good books with queer male leads written by a queer guy where the MM relationship is not the center of the story but just a part of it aren't easy to find, so I admit I was afraid I would miss the moment where the book finally shines and kept on reading.

On Twitter, the author described the city in which the story takes place as "a dark, mist-filled Venice full of empty canals" and I wish the writing had conveyed this atmosphere as clearly, because the setting felt so dull. It was also difficult to root for the main characters' romance since one of them remains a mystery until the last quarter of the story.

The second half is better: the setting changes, and characters whose viewpoints alternated until this point finally meet each other. The last quarter of the book, in particular, delivers several twists and revelations, although I feel like their impact could have been greater if the characters and their relationships had been more fully developed earlier in the narrative. It felt more like a succession of very lucky encounters than satisfying payoffs.

This is the first shifter story I've read and I don't think I'm a fan of the tropes I saw in it.

The first one is not specific to these stories but it bugs me every time I see it: on one hand, Ox - the main character - is described as a little slow and rather average, probably so that readers can identify with him, or at least empathize with him. On the other hand, he accomplishes unheard-of feats, and the other characters keep telling him how unique and extraordinary he is.

To be clear, I'm not against wish fulfillment stories, or just stories where there's an obvious fantasy at play. For instance The Goblin Emperor reads like a fantasy for people who have been mistreated in the past and feel that, if they were given a lot of power, they would use it to treat other people with the kindness they didn't receive. (And also get a hyper competent and loyal secretary to help them understand social codes; ugh, the dream.) And I was very much the target audience.

But a main character that's at the same time insignificant and amazing does nothing for me.

Which brings me to the more specific tropes I disliked: wolves mate for life, and Ox is chosen by a werewolf just after he talked to him. Why? Because he's awesome! Even though he didn't do anything special at this point!

There are also Alpha wolves (a thing that is notoriously a myth a this point, on top of not being a very interesting literary device here I think), who get the devotion and the trust of the rest of their pack. Why? "Because they're the Alpha" (you can't miss it, it's repeated all the time). To be fair, the story challenges the idea that Alpha-ness is something that is only given or taken, and not something that you can develop through your own leadership. The Alpha's sense of responsibility to their pack is also a major plot point. But it seems that once you're an Alpha, it's for the rest of your life.

Also pack dynamics are barely there. There are a few conflicts that prevent the two main characters from getting together right away, but most characters are very nice and feel supernaturally drawn to the Alpha, which simplifies a lot of things.

In a nutshell, I feel like the story glosses over what makes relationships difficult to build and to maintain. There is authority without clear legitimacy. There is immediate attachment for life. And there's having a community that welcomes you with open arms because you don't realize it but you're totally amazing, and you would give your life for them.

And I get why it's enticing. I'm in my late thirties, and seeing friends or family often means planning everything weeks in advance because everyone is busy and/or lives far away and/or answers: "you know, it's complicated with kids :/" There's something so appealing about the idea of a close-knit group of loved ones living around you, that are so connected to each other that sometimes talking isn't even necessary.

But in the story, so little of it feels truly earned that it doesn't work for me.