Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsAnti-Asian sentiment upsetting
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2021
The story itself is good, paced well, and has relatable characters, but a line in the story really disturbed me--basically ruining it. In essence, people turned into vampires due to a "side effect of traditional Chinese medicine." The author goes on to explain that the demand for medicinal cures nearly a thousand years ago led to black market sales of animals, causing the extinction of different animals. One of these infected animals led to vampirism.
The fact this was published in 2020, when anti-Asian sentiment was at a high because of C*OVID makes the "Chinese medicine" comment especially inflammatory. I get the whole animal rights angle...that it's awful what we do to animals. That alone would've been fine without specifying "Chinese." Quite frankly, killing animals for medicinal purposes or other things is a worldwide phenomenon--driven by an equally greedy Western and Eastern market.
It's disappointing especially when, after looking at the author's social media, she posted in support of #stopaapihate. Does she not realize that normalizing the "blaming" of an ethnicity/race is only fanning the flames of hate?
Disappointed to say the least.
