Review: Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
From a mythology buff’s perspective, I was delighted with Odd and the Frost Giants. From a disability perspective, though, I was confused.
From a mythology buff’s perspective, I was delighted with Odd and the Frost Giants. From a disability perspective, though, I was confused.
While Rory’s portrayal isn’t flawless, it’s well researched, and a significant step in the right direction of treating autistic characters as regular teenagers and integral parts of the cast.
When I received my diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome seven years ago, I thought of all the young people today who face the social challenges and bullying that I faced decades earlier. I wanted to create a character like me, but one who fights back against the way others treat her in a way that I never did.
Although Kurt’s character seems to largely exist to serve the central romance, I was pleasantly surprised by how many pitfalls Perkins avoided in a wonderfully understated manner. Various assumptions and tropes were casually turned over with a single line here or there.
In the time since I first read Wonder, my understanding of my disfigurement, and the world it occupies, has transformed. How will I now read and receive what was the most personally representative book of my life?
While some elements of the representation were handled decently, I ultimately wasn’t a fan.
Keri’s anxiety seems more of a framing device than anything else; The Shattering doesn’t contain as thorough a portrayal of anxiety as I’d hoped for, though its representations of other kinds of diversity more than make up for that.
It’s a rare occurrence when an author can update an already published book, and even more rare when that update includes a huge overhaul of the portrayal of an autistic character. Alyssa Hillary takes a look at both the original and updated version in this review.
Despite some reservations, our reviewer would recommend this contemporary novel about young Bat – and the reviewer’s ten-year-old goddaughter agrees.
This is a story about what it’s like to go crazy, and it is brilliantly, masterfully crafted.