#nightangel — Public Fediverse posts

I just finished reading The Way of Shadows, and one of the things that stuck out to me about the book was that the ultimate horror in this fantasy world is sodomy.
We find this in the early chapters in the child rapes, which are perpetrated by Rat, a man. He dresses Jarl up as a girl, and debases him in this way. It is pure horror, but a horror that explicitly defies gender expectations. Indeed, part of the horror is the fact that it does not conform to normal heterosexual, patriarchal relations.
In later chapters, we see Jarl again. He's not a shell of a human, but he is clearly discontent with his position. He is whoring himself out to a man; something he considers rather disgraceful, it seems. Partially because his "boyfriend"/sugar daddy is married to a woman, and he is just the plaything on the side. Nowhere do we see him consider the possibility of a loving relationship. We don't even know if he is into men at all. It is telling, though, that the horror of whoring oneself out is, again, homosexual. It could have been heterosexual, but no, for ultimate effect, the author chose to have it be homosexual.
Lastly, and most clearly, we see it in the scene where Roth borderline tortures Logan. Roth orders that Logan's cock and balls be cut off, and that he then be thrown to the sodomites.

Time and time again, sexual abuse appears as the horror, with the homosexual aspect of it pushing the horror even further. There is little sexual abuse in this book that does not involve the horror of homosexuality in some way.
We can't really see this as independent from the sexism. Indeed, in the first chapters, the debasement came from Jarl not only being raped, but raped as a girl. Jarl later whores himself out, but he is the sole man to do so - he is someone who has a woman's job. And, again, the last and most clearly: the sign and proof of manhood, the cock and balls, are cut off, in an attempt to turn Logan into a mere woman.

#Books #NightAngel #TheWayOfShadows #BrentWeeks