Misappropriation Much?

I'm a big Danirl Wisniewski fan, so hearing him perform anything that isn't atonal (yes, even Big D has phoned it in on occasion. I guess he was going for dramatic, but it didn't work). He does a great job breathing life into the multitude of male characters.
Rebecca Woods is pretty accomplished too, but still hasn't quite managed to get me to like any of her characters. She should ABSOLUTELY say away from the cockney accent. She simply cannot master it, and it's painful to hear. As for the likeability of her characters, the fault lies partly with the author's construction, and presentation, partly with the director and partly with her. It's hidden within her tone and pronunciation, I believe - both fixable, of course. Her talents do not match Wisniewski's, however, and it was possible to become confused as to who was speaking at times.
The story was enjoyable, but needlessly complicated in the name of the author David Burke presumably trying to distinguish his litRPG world from all the others. It just came over as downright stupid and needlessly harsh at times. And I wouldn't call the ending a twist in the tale so much as a screeching U-turn so big as to ask yourself, so what was it all for then? If I'd been reading instead of listening, I'd have felt my time had been wasted,despite the many enjoyable segnents. Some of the grammar and terminology is atrocious. For example, the past tense of "lay" is "laid" or "lay", NOT "LIED" ! That's a whole other word!
And tall. buildings are not generally "floored" but "storied", from the singular "storey". "Floored" is to be amazed or awed, for goodness' sake!
Now, to the misappropriation. As I was listening, I don't know how Mr Burke is choosing to spell the race of the Dark Pantheon, but from Wisniewski's pronunciation, it sounds like Orishi. As a Londoner of Jamaican heritage, my roots are in West Africa, so I am DEEPLY offended that David Burke would take a very real African religion, twist and use it in this way.
The Orisha (òrìṣà, orixá, orisa, oricha, orichá or orixá) are deities in the religion of West African peoples.of Yoruba, Bantu, Igbo people and Gbe, and several religions of the African diaspora that derive from it, such as Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican Santería and Brazilian Candomblé (which has influences from the Roman Catholic form of Christianity). Like the Japanese Shinto religion, worship of the Orisha means obeisance to ancestors and nature, beings and objects of power.
So, it's incredibly disappointing to have an author use a close approximation to name his "fictional" dark religion of dark, ugly ogres, orcs, trolls, goblins, centaurs, and bad guys creatires. It's bad enough that my own ancestors endonym has been lost to time and globally replaced by the European's invasive, oppressive and supremely inaccurate mononyn of "black", when the uber-mixed diaspora is so very far from it. But we also have to endure the western association of black being inherently bad, evil, depressing or dirty, and only very occasionally, chic.
A little more due diligence in future please.

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Sexist and dumb

I’d like to like this but maaan, this book is basically very blatant male wish fulfilment for 17 year olds. The protagonist is slimy AF and the author’s male gaze rests over everything heavily. Ugh, not a good look.

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1 person found this helpful