Brilliant Death

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Amy Rose Capetta: Brilliant Death (2019, Penguin Publishing Group)

384 pages

English language

Published 2019 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:
978-0-451-47846-7
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A young shapeshifter has to learn to control her powers, while simultaneously using them to disguise herself as a boy and confront the people who murdered her father.

2 editions

Review of 'Brilliant Death' on 'Storygraph'

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I enjoyed this overall, it reminded me of Howl’s Moving Castle but with crime families.

However, I’m a little bothered by the characterization of the one character as “nonbinary”. I know nonbinary has become a casual catch all phrase for everything outside of gender norms basically, and the author is themselves nonbinary, but the character being referred to changes back and forth between a shape that is unequivocally referred to as male and with he/him pronouns and one that is unequivocally referred to as a woman with she/her pronouns. This strikes me as very binary?? It’s literally just two gender options?? I guess I’d more accurately call the character genderfluid... I know this is a quibble, but it was uncomfortable for me to read expecting more exploration and rejection of gender binary, maybe more like my own experience, and then finding it so rigidly binary instead. :\