Review - The Lotus Fountain by Nicole Little and JD Ryot
Preamble
I’m slowly making my way through the Slipstreamers series. It’s a series of novellas, published by local-to-me indie genre publisher Engen Books, set in a world where the heroine Cassidy Cane jumps through portals to alternate dimensions, pulling YA Indiana Jones hijinks and capers… and it seems like most of the other worlds are a dystopia of one form or another.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. It’s either five stars or nothing these days – if I don’t like it, no review. Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
“Cassidy thought for sure that if Marcella had been wearing a string of pearls around her lying neck, she would have been clutching them, meme style.”
Cassidy Cane is back, and this time she’s heading to gyno-dystopia. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never seen anything like this before – a matriarchal society where it seems like Utopia at first and then something rotten in the State of Denmark is subsequently perceived feels somewhat familiar from a sci-fi perspective, but Little’s version of this idea is quite excellent in its own right.
Let’s be clear – this is YA, so there is a certain level of verboten territory in terms of sexuality, but it definitely seethes beneath the surface in this one. The sexual element is not quite defined – something about women getting pregnant from a well of water that heals, the eponymous Lotus Fountain. The womyn gave the lads the boot because they were big Ds bearing Ds back in the day (and the allegory to our Rick Jamesian ‘man’s world’ gets somewhat heavy-handed here), making it a female-only society. There are no dudes, anywhere. Again, it’s not well explained and is meant to have a bit of mystery about it, I think.
That, or it flew right over my head.
Cassidy gets charmed by the place and its inhabitants, and even considers moving permanently to the place. But then she finds out where all the little boys who are born from ladies boning the small body of water go, and it’s not back home with their mothers from the hospital. Obviously, this doesn’t go over well with the women what pupped the scamps, which is part of where the dystopian element becomes clear. It becomes sad, and I was genuinely moved to tears at one point, which speaks to Little’s skill as a writer.
Like all of Cassidy Cane’s stories, it’s a quick read, which I definitely appreciate these days. It’s well worth the buck fiddy asking price for the e-book here in Canada. Well written, well paced, easy to digest – what more could you want?
Check it out on the ‘zon here.