4.25/5 ARC gifted by the publisher

I wasn’t sure if this ride will be worth it until after 500 pages, things turned around for me and I ended up really enjoying this one!

DARKMOTHERLAND is definitely for the niche audience who like weird books with super on the nose political satire that will prepare you for the incoming US administration 😂 I had a lot of fun reading about the absolutely outrageous yet totally imaginable political scenarios

There’s a very interesting juxtaposition between two woman, one a daughter of a famous political dissenter who marries into a wealthy family with deep ties to the current dictator, and another a trans woman who endured a lot of homophobia/transphobia yet found her way into the inner circles of the dictator prime minister. It is these two intertwined storylines that pushed me to finishing this 700+ page chonkers 

I thought the author, albeit a man, did a great job examining femininity in authoritarian regimes. Not just for physical attraction, but how one’s femininity as considered through the lens of motherhood (mother to family, to citizens, etc) is fascinatingly described via the two FMC

That said, i wonder if the book could’ve been 400 pages to be a bit more focused on the two main storylines. I appreciate the various side characters to give more context into Nepali culture, but find the story loses its momentum in the middle