This book is a Not For Me title. I mark titles with competitive qualitative content NFM when I find the content personally disinteresting or the writing style to be dissonant to my preferences.

Marked overall as 3 because, while I randomize checks for qualitative markers I do not read anywhere near enough of the book to give either more or less than that rating and a blank rating is not an option.

At the very least, if a white writer is going to write a novel depicting a culture not their own, they should use their different vantage point on that culture to tell stories that people in that culture wouldn't or can't, and to do it well, rather than succumb to tired and offensive sexist and homophobic clichés and stereotypes. Given her failings on these counts, Hearn's novels fail to justify her having written them, let alone me or anyone else reading them.