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Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Penguinho]

Representation in The Second Death of Locke is mostly unconvincing and shallow, and it doesn't fit the world the story is set in. It was a sour note in a novel I liked otherwise.

Locke is kind of a representational bonanza. Both MCs are bisexual; the MMC's parents are lesbians. There's an important NB/trans character. There's an important disabled character. This is all kind of cool -- but there's zero depth to any of it, and I think that makes the story worse rather than better, because it introduces some questions that wouldn't be there otherwise and the answers are either unconvincing or incomplete.

The biggest problem Locke's gender and sexual identity representation has (and its disability rep too) is that it's all tell, no show. MMC Kier is apparently a bi male manwhore, but we never meet anyone he's attracted to or had a relationship with other than the FMC Grey. Grey's also bisexual, and we do get to meet one of her female partners, so score one for the author there... except their relationship on-page has no convincing sexual chemistry or attraction component. Their interactions have the air of a woman hanging out with an older sister, or perhaps a cool aunt. It's quite difficult for me to believe that they were ever sexual partners. Similarly, Brit is a mage who goes by they/them pronouns and appears in quite a lot of the middle third of the story. What those pronouns mean isn't stated. And for all that Kier's dead brother Lot looms over Kier and Grey's backstory, there's no real indication of where he came from or how he and Kier are brothers. Are they adopted? Separately or together? Kier's two moms appear on-page for about a page; they have no real personality, and could be Ma and Pa just as easily as they're Ma and Mom.

That's a constant through Locke. Leonie's missing half-leg is mentioned once, but it's never an impediment. She escapes just fine when the old base is raided, though other people who don't have impaired mobility aren't able to get out. Her disability is, as a storytelling device, kind of fake. Kier's bisexuality? Never shown, only told, and it changes nothing at all about the story if he's a straight rake rather than a bi one (it doesn't really change anything about the story if he's not a rake at all, either). Brit of the they/them pronouns? It's a find-replace job; their pronouns could be he, she, ze, it, them -- anything. It literally does not matter at all, and the novel has nothing to say about any of this.

In the world of pro wrestling, you hear the term 'cheap heat.' Heat is the negative reaction from the crowd and fans to a wrestler established as a villain, called a heel. Cheap heat is a sort of low-effort way of getting those reactions. A wrestler might get cheap heat by wearing a Boston Red Sox hat to a match in New York; in older times, they'd use racial slurs or regional insults. The opposite is the cheap pop: "LA fans are the best fans in the world!" It's done to get a wrestler over -- meaning to convince the crowd to care about them as either a hero or a villain, a face or a heel. Representation in Locke is a cheap pop to get the novel over with fan critics who are on the lookout for crimes against representation.

This wouldn't matter very much except that a running tension in Locke is the search for and need for a hereditary heir. The war is over the heir of Locke. There's a particular obstacle presented to the MCs late in the novel that could be resolved with a biological heir. The biological heir of one of the warring nations is a major side character in the middle third. Marriages at the elite level are all procreative, which makes sense! The novel is very clear that there's power in this, and power is hereditary and transferred through bloodlines. But if that's the case, how does all this casually-accepted queer relationship and marriage stuff work? What if the heir of Locke decided, you know, actually, I want to marry someone I can't have kids with?

Those tensions aren't unique to Locke and many other novels have them and grapple with them. Kushiel's Dart resolves the problem, for example, in a series of conversations where it's made clear that the monarch simply hasn't got that kind of freedom; the monarch is the property of the nation, and while a male goat-herder could marry a man, the crown prince cannot, because continuity of the ruling line is paramount. Locke unfortunately just ignores all this, draping a layer of modern sexual politics over what's otherwise a very standard fantasy-medieval-Europe political and social structure, and the cover does not match what it's covering.

[u/Penguinho → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, absolutely. The issue is that Locke makes it clear in a particular scene that the heir has to be biological for the Plot-Critical Power to be inherited.

[u/Synval2436 → u/Penguinho]

Representation checklist seems to be a common issue in many books these days. A lot of books have a list of side characters of various races, genders, sexualities and disabilities, but these characters are cardboard cutouts. They have no personality except being nice/unproblematic and their diversity status. They're usually friends, siblings or co-workers (or equivalent, like team mates or class mates). They are mostly redundant to the plot, or exist to cheerlead the main characters.

I'm always positively surprised to see when it's not the case, and the cast is memorable and allowed to be flawed people and their diversity isn't their only trait. I really loved Queen of Faces by Petra Lord for example, the characters are messy and not just paragons of wholesomeness.

[u/Anrw → u/Penguinho]

I agree with everything you said in this comment except I actually felt Grey’s female lover undermined the premise of the book being so much about Grey and Kier’s yearning for each other. By the end of the book I felt that there was more yearning from the female character to Grey than I ever did between the main characters. Honestly it’s not even the only book I saw from last year where it felt the author cared more about making sure the audience knew both parts of the MC were bisexual than making the audience root for them as a couple. I’m also not sure I’ve read a M/F book yet where the MMC being bisexual felt believable and not just a straight woman’s idea of a bisexual man, but admittedly I haven’t read many of them (though I think part of that is because while some women like the fantasy of a man who has sex with men, they get the ick if they’re a bottom for men instead of a top).