I'm gonna be real: I hated this. There were interesting concepts, and had they been utilized differently and written by literally anyone else, it could've been an actual good book.
writing.
The writing in The Deer and the Dragon is miles better than in The Night and its Moon. It's still not good, but it's better if that tells you anything. The first-person POV mixed with modern-day speak works so much better for Piper's capabilities. It was much easier to get through, but it was still a huge slog for me. Honestly, what are the editors at Bloom even doing? There were still way too many typos and sentences with missing words. Piper still misuses the word dredges after using it in THREE(+?) BOOKS. HOW DO YOU STILL NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DREDGES AND DREGS? Dregs are the sediment of a liquid, so what's at the bottom of your coffee cup. Dredge is when they scoop up mud from the bottom of a river. TWO VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. The word broach is also misused in this book TWELVE times, and it's PART OF THE CENTRAL PLOT OF THE BOOK. You mean to use BROOCH, PIPER. They're pronounced the same, but they mean two different things. Again, what the hell are the editors at Bloom doing?
characters
Really, the only character I can talk about is Marlow because this book is just about Marlow and how amazing, special, perfect, and genius Marlow is. I fucking hate Marlow. If I ever met Marlow in real life, I would beat her up. Marlow is the most unlikable person ever. The story opens up with her on a date with a guy she's not interested in and can't remember his name; when she gets it wrong, and he corrects her, she continues to call him the wrong name all the way to the end of the book. She mentally berates him for mixing wasabi and soy sauce and cannot let it go. She’s also an AWFUL friend. It seems like her friend's only real purpose is to support her and tell her how amazing she is. She never bothers to make plans with them or inform them about anything that’s happening in her life. When she goes missing for a good chunk of the book, and they're blowing up her phone worried about her, she doesn't even bother to call them to calm them down. She doesn't think about them at all. She's far more concerned with herself and finding her imaginary boyfriend, who she only just decided was real. Her editor tells her she's at risk of losing her job if Marlow doesn't deliver her work or update her on what's happening, and Marlow just…doesn't care. She's like, 'No excuse I can give will be enough, so I'm just not going to say anything at all because I'm afraid of confrontation'. Grow the fuck up?? Her friend Nia only became her friend because she obsessively messaged her on social media until Marlow 'gave in', and now they're family? Somehow? Yet Marlow doesn't think about Nia once or bothers to comfort her when Nia has to call Marlow's abusive mom to ensure Marlow isn't dead. Kirby has allegedly been Marlow's friend since childhood, but does Kirby know anything about Caliban at all? Does Nia? Does Marlow tell her friends anything? If they know about the abuse her mom put her through, do they know how that abuse started? When Fauna shows up and freaks out over liking Kirby’s name so much, Marlow takes it upon herself to tell Fauna the story of Kirby’s name, scornfully informing Fauna that Kirby isn’t their real name the second Fauna expresses interest in it. (Like what, are you jealous that Fauna likes Kirby’s name, you fucking insecure freak??) The story revolves solely around something traumatic that happened to Marlow and how she and Kirby sat and played Super Smash Bros. Kirby liked their character so much that they adopted the name. Which…okay, choosing the name because you liked a video game character, okay, fine. But the whole story preceding this was so unnecessary and just made Marlow come off as suuuuch a whiny baby. “Oh, you want to know about my friend’s name? Well, first, let me preface it with this long woe-is-me story all about ME before I tell you how they chose their name because basically everything revolves around me.”
The way Marlow talks about rejection is so juvenile. You're in your thirties girls, get over it. Life is full of rejections. Someone telling you they didn't to play with you when you were eight years old isn't something you should form your whole life around. Like Marlow doesn't want kids because she doesn't want them to face rejection. Oh my god, Marlow. I also can't empathize with her trauma with her mom at all because I feel like I didn't really see much of it. I'm sure some of the things she says might hit with other people, but I wanted an actual flashback of a super intense fight or conversation instead of an overview of what happened.
plot.
It took a while to get to the actual plot. About 100 pages in before things start really happening. I would’ve liked a little more exposition on Marlow’s relationship with Caliban at the beginning of the book. I get that some of the reveals needed to come more towards the end, but I kind of wish that maybe the fox had spoken to Marlow, too, which would’ve helped with why she’s so sure she’s insane. Foxes don’t talk! In all honesty, I wish this story had been restructured entirely. I think it would've been substantially better if we'd started out in Marlow's childhood. We can see how her day to day life was before Caliban ever appeared, how things were with her mom, who can also see through the veil. Maybe she notices some strange things about her mom that she just brushes off, which she later sees in herself and understands why her mom responded that way. Then something actually traumatic happens instead of some little kids not letting Marlow play with them, instigating her starting to see Caliban. I also would've liked to see flashbacks to Marlow's previous lives. While she's busy trying to convince herself Caliban isn't real, those flashbacks would add to her thinking she's losing her grip on reality. Maybe she'll be doing something innocent, like washing the dishes, and then suddenly, she sees herself standing in the middle of a raging battle, wearing long, elaborate robes. Do you see what I'm saying? This could've been cool! Instead, I had to read about Marlow jerking off about herself for 600 pages.
At some point, Caliban shows up to Marlow looking like a human. She's a teenager at this point, but they eventually start sleeping together, and like…idk something about that feels icky to me. It feels like grooming. Because he's clearly thousands of years old, he probably stays the same age while she's a teenager. What age did he wait for her to turn before their relationship turned sexual? Also, she doesn't even think he's real, and he does nothing to convince her that he is. Yeah….just no thanks. I'm good. Marlow tells Caliban when she's 21, she doesn’t want to see him anymore, so she literally physically cannot see him, but she can hear and feel him, and he still shows up, and like they keep having sex. So she’s just having sex with her imaginary demon friend for like five years before she’s finally like, all right, this is weird; maybe we should stop. And then she immediately regrets that when he stops showing up and then the rest of the book finally happens.
We also get flashbacks to when Marlow first starts escorting, and tbh, I hated this depiction of sex work. I keep hoping since Piper claims to be an advocate for sex work and is a former SWer that, we might get some actual depth to this plot. Maybe learn how Marlow was able to mold herself into the person she needed to be for each client, how she’s able to play people, etc. But no. She meets some random girl in a foreign country where she’s teaching English to children, and the girl is like, OMG, you’re too pretty to BE A TEACHER. COME HANG OUT ON MY YACHT. Now, I’m going to be so real. I feel like any woman with a speck of intelligence in their brain would have red flags going off right about now. If a random woman I met in a foreign country invited me to her yacht five minutes after meeting me, I’d immediately assume this woman was about to try and murder me or kidnap me or traffick me or something. But not Marlow. She is like fuck it, why not. She flies on over to wherever this yacht is(literally, she has to get on a plane and fly there) and makes some new besties who introduce her to the wonderfully glamorous non-dangerous life of escorting, where they hand her clients and set up the appointments for her and blah blah blah(also, wanna point out that Marlow even tries to say that she built this sex work empire herself. bitch no you didn't. it was all handed to you). I don’t feel like I really need to go further about why this is a really poor, dangerous rose-colored glasses-type depiction of sex work. It’s just not the reality.
Flash forward five years later, and Marlow is now a top-selling author writing about South African folklore as a white woman, trying to date other men, still having sex with her imaginary friend, calling her nonbinary friend a horse girl, the usual. Her escort pals are nowhere to be seen, and we have no clue what happened to them. We never hear from them again; they just vanish once Marlow gets what she wants from them, just like Nia and Kirby vanish once Marlow finds Fauna and Azrames. One day, Marlow’s at a book signing and sees the ONE bad client she had(because in all the years/months fucking strange men you meet in a foreign country, only one time does it go bad. okay, sure) He somehow finds where she lives, breaks into her home, and tries to murder her. An angel shows up and murders him instead, and then Caliban finally reveals his face and explains to Marlow that he has marked everyone who’s ever wronged her. (Wronged her in what way, tho. Like if someone accidentally shoulder-checked her on the street, are they now marked for death?) I thought it was kind of weird that she’s not like…focused on the fact that her hallucinations have extended to two people and another person dying. She’s still convinced Caliban is a figment of her imagination even after she sees this happen, and Caliban explains to her that he couldn’t save her because there’s some type of contract with her that forbids him from doing anything under her roof without her permission. But she still gets mad and banishes him, and now he can’t come back, and now she’s like, but wait, no, I didn’t mean it. Thus begins the search for Caliban.
Now, I could sit here and outline the rest of the book, but I won't because it's so boring, and nothing of substance really happens. So, to summarize. Marlow searches for Caliban fruitlessly for months and finally makes some progress when she decides to go to the house of the guy who tried to kill her and finds a parasitic entity that she continuously calls a Cheshire Cat. then Silas, the angel, shows up to save her again. Silas maybe wants to fuck Marlow, I can't tell. He waffles between abandoning Marlow to die and stalking her and her mom to force Marlow to bond with him for no seeming reason at all. Everyone and their mom wants Marlow to join their religion, and I don't know what the fuck makes her so special. Marlow is such a popular author that everyone recognizes her name, reveres her, fawns over her, and has multiple copies of her two books in their offices. She's so good that she inspired millions to switch religions. This book was so exhausting to read because it was just about how amazing Marlow is LMFAO. I'm pretty sure they even try to say she's the reincarnation of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Like….wow.
Marlow goes to Hell with Fauna to escape bonding with Silas, where they meet a literal stolen character design. this guy
(my original review has these images but I am an idiot and don't know how to post them so instead I'll share the links)
Don't believe me? here's the commissioned character art.
Anyway, his name is Azrames and he and Fauna are long time lovers and they go and bone while Marlow is in the next room and Marlow fucking masturbates to the sounds of them boning. So…I was forced to read about that, and I hated it. And then, at the end of the book, five chapters before it's over, we learn the bad guy who's been holding Caliban captive the entire time is a fertility goddess. Just out of nowhere. No mention of it previously. So, no one tells Marlow the actual plan, and instead, they send her into this fertility clinic the goddess is working out of and have her pretend to want to get pregnant. So the goddess drugs her without her consent and puts her in a room full of half-naked men, hot stereotypes from every ethnicity, while she's SUPER horny. One of the doctors tells her that 'mixed babies are all the rage right now'. The men all tell her how hot and amazing she is and how lucky they are for the chance to get to fuck her. Then after she chooses one of them, she grinds all over him while he just stands there, then they take him out and bring Caliban in and decide he'll fuck her instead. I just wanna point out that this, all of this, would be rape. Marlow didn't consent to being drugged, and if she didn't know who Caliban was, they basically just took the guy she "agreed" to have sex with away and brought in one she didn't agree to for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't matter that she's saying yes to it; she is drugged. She can't consent. Anyway, Caliban sticks his dick in Marlow and just leaves it there, unmoving, and then makes out with the fertility goddess before stabbing her in the heart and cutting off her head, even though five chapters earlier, they said it's super hard to kill a god. I'm just…wow.
Marlow gets taken back to Fauna's apartment by Silas while Caliban and Azrames are stuck fighting more Cheshire Cat demon children that I imagine look like the spider baby from Toy Story. Marlow is still high, so she's putting the moves on Fauna. She's kissing her throat, rubbing her thigh, trying to suck on her fingers. Let me tell you rn, if one of my friends showed up at my place high af doing this shit to me, I'd be livid. Because I guarantee you, Marlow will not apologize for doing any of this to Fauna.
Fauna tells Marlow that they can be sunflowers. The book ends.
I will read the next one because I like to suffer, but…I hated this. I give it 2 stars because the writing is better than TNAIM, but it was not a hit for me at all.
by Live-Needleworker-60