/lit/ - Literature

Blood Over Bright Haven is testing my patience. So far, it's all been about oppressed groups having it rough in society. 1 guy escapes a mysterious blight. Some kind of light that has the ability to physically unravel a person's entire being. Leaving them in ribbons of flesh. His people all die, except him and his niece, who manage to find safety within the protective dome of the city. Upon reaching the safety of the dome, he's immediately treated like scum by the boarder guards, but he convinces them to not kick him back out.

The 2nd character is a girl who is taking her test to become a high mage. And her entire story is about how she's a high achieving women, and all of society is against her. She's going to be the first female high mage. And the magic system just happens to resemble programming. That's right, it's an analogy for women in stem! and the literal patriarchy doesn't want a woman to succeed!

I'm in the middle of chapter 6 now, and they're lengthy chapters. And all of it has been about how difficult it is for women to succeed in a male dominated society. And then she meets the man from chapter 1, and improbable events lead to the man, who was working as a janitor, to get assigned as her assistant. Immediately, she starts tutoring him on magic. Then they go to a bar, and she meets more of the lower class people. And then she gets drunk and starts to catch feelings for him. So quickly too! This all happens in a single day. Just in the previous chapters, she was like "I have no time for a man". Now day 2 of being around this guy, and she's blushing and checking out his shoulders, and thinking about his rough hands.

I'm going to give it a few more chapters, because the book hasn't gotten to the meat of the story yet. This is all still set up for some secret yet to be revealed. I'm curious what the secret will be. I have a feeling it's going to be something like "utilizing magic creates the blight". I have to read on to see.