SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Davis: https://t.co/t5vAsCXMFM
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 30, 2021
Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): In a dystopian weird west setting, 5 teenage girls escape from a Sundown House in a desperate bid for freedom in a world fully against both those without means and women. Tough to read in the first act, but really strong YA SF/F in the end.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 30, 2021
2/3
The Good Luck Girls is a young adult fantasy marketed as "Westworld" meets "The Handmaid's Tale", which well......okay, outlandish comparisons to dystopian prestige shows usually makes me less rather than more interested in reading such a book. And to be fair, this book is essentially a feminist hybrid of the Weird-West and Dystopian SF/F genres, so I get the marketing decision to go with a Handmaid's Tale comparison, but well...don't expect any human-like robots like Westworld. Still, I saw this and its sequel pop up on enough lists to take a chance on it anyway, despite its bad marketing comparisons.
And the Good Luck Girls is pretty well done and pretty worth your time. The story features five girls sold to a "welcome house" (whorehouse) as children by desperate families in a country where one race of people are forever stuck in debt and poverty, as they try to escape across the country to find some semblance of freedom. The book has a habit of info dumping, especially early, and ends kind of abruptly even if in a satisfying fashion (although one that sets up the book's sequel) - but its characters and themes are really strong and I found myself really invested once I got through the book's first quarter. In short, I'm happy I looked past the horrible marketing and I will be back for book 2 later this year.
TRIGGER WARNING: The Prologue of this book features a man attempting to rape a 16 year old girl before she hits him with a lamp as he chokes her. Nothing further than that is shown on page, there is also essentially rape-as-backstory, as two of our five protagonists spent at least a year unwillingly as a "sundown girl" (prostitute). As such the first act of the story may be difficult to read for many readers.
--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Aster and Clementine were sold to the Welcome House when they were children, when their family seemingly couldn't afford to still feed them in their poor community. Sold the promise of a good pampered life, what Aster and Clementine found instead was tough life doing menial and serving work until age 16....and then afterwards, when Aster turned 16, life as a "sundown girl", giving her body to the brags - the fair blood men (unlike the dust-blooded girls) - off the road. And there's now way to escape, due to the magically tattooed favor that marks them forever more as a "good luck girl", for anyone to see.
But when Clementine turned 16 and was supposed to have her "lucky night" - she responds to being choked by hitting her Brag, the son of an important politician, with a lamp, killing him. To save her life, Aster must find a way to escape with Clementine, along with their two friends Tansy and Mallow, and the unreliable and seemingly cruel Violet, who catches them in the act.
But escaping the Welcome House hardly means finding safety - as their favors brand the girls plainly for anyone to see, and the Welcome House's sinister emotionally manipulating Raveners are hot on their trail. Their only hope of escape is to get all the way across the country to a woman who could possibly remove their Favors...a task that seems utterly impossible, especially with no one better to lead them than Aster herself.....
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The Good Luck Girls begins with a prologue from the perspective of Clementine, but otherwise takes place entirely from the perspective of Aster, who serves as our main protagonist throughout. Aster's perspective is a bit rocky at the start and prone to infodumping to explain the setting, which is essentially the wild west part of a country with a religious nature of origin (the Reckoning) where an oppressed group (the dust-bloods, who have no shadows) have to work off their debts for the benefit of Landmasters. And of course Aster also explains how this is a land where the dead wander in the night, such as vengeants - angry spirits that tried to attack anyone without the right items to repel them - and where some men seem to sell their souls to become Raveners, who have the power to impart emotions of fear, anger, and dismay to people around them, for the sake of torture. It's....a lot, especially early and not exactly delivered in a subtle fashion - and to be fair, very little of this book even elsewise is particularly subtle.
And yet, despite all of the above, Aster's voice really works, especially with how it plays off the other characters in our main crew - the five girls and one guy who joins them. Aster is the woman who has always quietly raged at what has befallen her - about the men who dare to use and abuse her, about the men who might do the same to her sister, about Violet, who seems to enable it all, about the unjust treatment of good luck girls and dust-bloods in general, etc. It leaves her with an inability to trust practically everyone, and makes it hard for her to really enjoy even the small things in life. Aster wishes she didn't feel this way, and feels like she's always burning on the inside - and of course fears that her outward anger will when she dies turn her into a vengeant, never resting but instead just harming the living who outlast her. And she fears that her anger, and her own lack of knowledge and ability, will get not just herself killed but her sister as well, who is really the only thing to keep her going.
Aster's attitude is contrasted by the rest of the girls, who really showoff a wide range of how one can react to such an oppressive abusive world. Foremost in contrasting her are Clementine and Violet. Clementine may have killed the Brag, something Aster isn't sure she could actually do, but she feels tremendous guilt and always hopes for the best in new people she meets. And Violet did go through the same experiences as Aster, even though she is the only fair blood, and was born in the Welcome House. But Violet's reaction was to hide all her anger inside, to make herself numb with an addictive drug, and to try and always act as practical as possible to make it all more bearable, even if that meant making the other girls miserable. Deep inside she felt the same anger and disgust, the shame and fear, and that same experience with Aster draws the two a bit closer together despite their initial dislike....and so while she's constantly tart and dismissive and sarcastic to drive the other girls and Aster nuts, it comes from the same place. Adding to this trio are Tansy and Mallow, who escaped with them before they became Sundown Girls, and whose reaction to their hard work in the Welcome House in a different way - by falling in love with each other.
These emotions and how the crew all acts in response to an oppressive and abusive environment, both in the Welcome House and out in the country, helps carry a plot that goes through quite a bit of the weird west staples. So you have the ghosts that wreak havoc in their anger that cross the lands, you have traps to rob rich land owners, you even have a bank robbery here. And you have six shooters, rifles, shotguns, knives, horses, trains, the works. It's a setting and plot that takes a number of twists and turns, some predictable some not, but all that generally work. The ending is perhaps a bit abrupt, with the crew meeting their end objective and that resolving everything way too quickly, but it satisfies still as the natural ending of this plot arc, and sets up a plot arc for the sequel. And it's a sequel I'll look forward to, despite the beginning of this book being so hard to read, as the girls escaped from the Welcome House. And that's more than I could've expected from its marketing.
The Good Luck Girls begins with a prologue from the perspective of Clementine, but otherwise takes place entirely from the perspective of Aster, who serves as our main protagonist throughout. Aster's perspective is a bit rocky at the start and prone to infodumping to explain the setting, which is essentially the wild west part of a country with a religious nature of origin (the Reckoning) where an oppressed group (the dust-bloods, who have no shadows) have to work off their debts for the benefit of Landmasters. And of course Aster also explains how this is a land where the dead wander in the night, such as vengeants - angry spirits that tried to attack anyone without the right items to repel them - and where some men seem to sell their souls to become Raveners, who have the power to impart emotions of fear, anger, and dismay to people around them, for the sake of torture. It's....a lot, especially early and not exactly delivered in a subtle fashion - and to be fair, very little of this book even elsewise is particularly subtle.
And yet, despite all of the above, Aster's voice really works, especially with how it plays off the other characters in our main crew - the five girls and one guy who joins them. Aster is the woman who has always quietly raged at what has befallen her - about the men who dare to use and abuse her, about the men who might do the same to her sister, about Violet, who seems to enable it all, about the unjust treatment of good luck girls and dust-bloods in general, etc. It leaves her with an inability to trust practically everyone, and makes it hard for her to really enjoy even the small things in life. Aster wishes she didn't feel this way, and feels like she's always burning on the inside - and of course fears that her outward anger will when she dies turn her into a vengeant, never resting but instead just harming the living who outlast her. And she fears that her anger, and her own lack of knowledge and ability, will get not just herself killed but her sister as well, who is really the only thing to keep her going.
Aster's attitude is contrasted by the rest of the girls, who really showoff a wide range of how one can react to such an oppressive abusive world. Foremost in contrasting her are Clementine and Violet. Clementine may have killed the Brag, something Aster isn't sure she could actually do, but she feels tremendous guilt and always hopes for the best in new people she meets. And Violet did go through the same experiences as Aster, even though she is the only fair blood, and was born in the Welcome House. But Violet's reaction was to hide all her anger inside, to make herself numb with an addictive drug, and to try and always act as practical as possible to make it all more bearable, even if that meant making the other girls miserable. Deep inside she felt the same anger and disgust, the shame and fear, and that same experience with Aster draws the two a bit closer together despite their initial dislike....and so while she's constantly tart and dismissive and sarcastic to drive the other girls and Aster nuts, it comes from the same place. Adding to this trio are Tansy and Mallow, who escaped with them before they became Sundown Girls, and whose reaction to their hard work in the Welcome House in a different way - by falling in love with each other.
These emotions and how the crew all acts in response to an oppressive and abusive environment, both in the Welcome House and out in the country, helps carry a plot that goes through quite a bit of the weird west staples. So you have the ghosts that wreak havoc in their anger that cross the lands, you have traps to rob rich land owners, you even have a bank robbery here. And you have six shooters, rifles, shotguns, knives, horses, trains, the works. It's a setting and plot that takes a number of twists and turns, some predictable some not, but all that generally work. The ending is perhaps a bit abrupt, with the crew meeting their end objective and that resolving everything way too quickly, but it satisfies still as the natural ending of this plot arc, and sets up a plot arc for the sequel. And it's a sequel I'll look forward to, despite the beginning of this book being so hard to read, as the girls escaped from the Welcome House. And that's more than I could've expected from its marketing.
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