A shattering sort of book if you're not braced for it, but one in which the protagonist comes through. If you didn't likeTender Morsels, you probably wouldn't like this, either.

Brief review:

I would have given this book 4 stars if the ending hadn't been so...abrupt? Super weird? Dissatisfying? Yeah, all of those. Deerskin follows the story of a princess who looks so much like her dead mother that she is brutally raped (nearly killed) by her own father and, in a delirium, escapes to a magical-ish cabin in the mountains to wait out the winter with her super awesome fleethound. With the help of a goddess she travels to a new kingdom where she eventually falls in love with the crown prince (and he with her) BUT THEN she starts remembering her old life and he asks her to marry him so she runs away again. She finally returns to find that her prince's sister is getting married to Deerskin's own father and she stops the wedding. Holy cow does she stop it.

Up until that point I really liked the book. Robin McKinley's writing is much less fluid and well-thought than in the other books I've read, but the story is a great adaptation of the (super creepy) fairytale and she handles the sexual abuse and recovery of the main character pretty well, although her SUPER AMNESIA is a little implausible but whatever. It's magical amnesia. I feel like the goddess part of the story should have had a more prominent role because until the ending (when sh*t gets weird) Deerskin is not sure if she just imagined everything or what. Also her dead mom is evil and maybe haunting a painting. What? I know. It doesn't really add anything to the story.The love story is obvious but that's fairytales. We ALWAYS know with whom the main character is going to fall in love. A lot of emphasis is given on looks in this story, though. Fat generally equals ugly (or ugly-mannered) and slim is beautiful now matter what - even when Deerskin is basically an emaciated albino running around she is still considered lovely. This is a sad pattern in otherwise lovely books that non-trad beauty is not just dismissed but equated with odiousness or sloth or ugliness. Yes, the prince is a bit fat, but he is thought slovenly and oafish until Deerskin gets to know him better.

So, my problem with this tale is the ending. Now, don't get me wrong - I do not shy away from gore in novels, but I expect it to make some sense or cause me to feel something other than disgust. To sum up the final scenes: Deerskin is manifested as the moon goddess (sort of) and confronts her father in front of all the wedding guests. He doesn't really seem to react through this entire process. There is a ton of blood streaming off of her (not sure why) and THEN she relives her miscarriage in front of everyone and ejects a ton of old blood all over the floor. Because. McKinley tells us that the floor gets used as an oracle because of the blood that is absorbed into magical moving patterns forever. Note that this has nothing to do with any other part of the story. Deerskin turns into a flaming woman (BECAUSE. JUST BECAUSE.) and honestly I don't know what happens to her dad at this point. All I know is that he doesn't seem to suffer or die or anything that the reader would want. He seems more confused about the whole experience. Then she runs away again. OF COURSE SHE DOES. Her prince finds her and they agree to get married and have babies. The end.

I wanted the rapist king to SUFFER but that doesn't really happen. Now, as McKinley herself has said to her readers "screw all y'all" (okay not really. I'm paraphrasing. She sort of said that she doesn't really care if long-time fans don't like her books because she doesn't write them for us anyway. Whatever. I don't have to like the author to like their books.) so we shouldn't expect her to give us good endings all the time. It can be hard after the brilliance that are Rose Daughter and Spindle's End to realize that many of her books are just...okay. So far I've read 6 of her books and a collection of short stories and I've liked 4 of the books. Not too bad. Up next I'll be reading the Hero and Crown so we'll see how that fares.

TW: rape, incest, abuse

n  She had decided to live. If she could not think of certain things, she would not think of them. There were other things to think of, immediate things.n

I recently got rid of someone from my feed on this website for laughing at trigger warnings, so if you're of the same opinion of that particular sot, take yourself out. It's bad enough that I have to pick apart my students at work for hurling the phrase "triggered" around, as if it wasn't scary enough for neuroatypicals and sexual assault survivors, what with movies like Split and the rest (You know around 70% of people with DID developed it as a result of being sexual assaulted as a child, right? No? And yet you get off on watching them being portrayed as monsters. Who's the monster here.) running around. Despite having switched from an open profile to a closed one and pruning those who treat with violent hierarchies as the oh-so-hip slang from the so-called friends list, I need to reiterate how not "nice" I am in reviews like these in hopes that'll cut down on the friend requests that keep on coming from those who want my words and my reading tastes without having to deal with me. You want my knowledge and my critical thinking? Work for it.

n  There were some things that took life and broke it, not merely into meaninglessness, but with active malice flung the pieces farther, into hell.n

I've never been raped. This means I've never been raped by a family memberor have had to deal with the resulting pregnancy and miscarriage. As such, I'm not going to argue with any review that says this whole book is a travesty when it comes to portraying the experiences of survivors of such. What I can say for certain is that this book portrays rape culture to a tee, and when it comes to the more subtle aspects of the build up, I sure hope the misguided accusations and violent burying of heads in the sand struck some readers in the gut, for there are too many ratings for there not to have been a pusher of the slogans of "she was asking for it" or "he couldn't help himself" in its crowd. See, rape happens as much as it does and is as ignored as much as it is because of gamers using it as casual slang (do not come at me with the archaic definition of "to take" because I will take your lack of context and shove it up your ass) and government officials defining it as a preexisting condition that insurance companies can refuse to cover and no one, save for a few cases, talking about it except those who have not experienced it, with those who have committed it being the loudest of the bunch. It starts with the father leering awkwardly at to close a range at the girls at his daughter's birthday party at the pool, comes up in the middle with the oh so famous John Green conflating discomfort with aged cis males intruding into spaces for young females with an accusation of sexual assault (and getting half the Internet behind him, as if his ego wasn't pampered enough), and ends with the US wearing its latest president with his baggage of lawsuits of sexual assaults of all ages like a badge of honor.

n  No one of us is so whole that [they] can see the future.n

This is a book of neglect, degradation, and healing. How accurately it portrays the degradation and healing is a complicated question, as this is the fantasy world portrayed by the books that I read when I was younger, and the more adult themes (we call these things adult when it is the children whom we refuse to stand for) does not cancel out the dragons, or the time travel, or the haunting. The only way to find out would be to give those whom have been hurt in this way control over their narratives of representation, and that will not happen so long as it's normalized that the Average Joe laughs instead of listens and the Average Jane ostracizes instead of supports. So long as that's the case, the Average Person will find it easier to expect that the survivors simply not survive so that they may get on with their fearless and flawless lives. The chemicals in your brain won't protect you forever.

n  Ammy saw the fear, and her friendly heart was shaken by the knowledge that any human creature could fear her own laughter.n

Revisiting McKinley after so long a time is a bit of a windfall, as I can't imagine myself capable of hashing out my thoughts on these issues at the time I added this book on this site, or even when I finally acquired a copy. Like all of her other works that I encounter, plan to encounter, and will inevitably reencounter, this is a play on a fairy tale, and the whole weight of Disney as a branch of the white supremacist patriarchy cannot erase the origins of a degradation many a society attempts to smother the evidence of today. There are still videos of children being gang raped circling the Internet, there are still senior citizens being rendered unable to function for the rest of the week because someone didn't warn them that their movie contained sexual assault, there is still a cavalier attitude towards a kind of inflicted pain that does not kill you and does not make you stronger indoctrinated by an academia more concerned with plagiarism than the souls of its students. I will not argue with anyone who thinks themselves threatened by what I have to say here, as my time and my energy are my own, and I will not spend it on sea lions and dog whistlers. The fact that, once upon a time, you looked away when you should have done something is not my concern. I don't have nightmares about any such thing, and you're welcome to yours.

Disturbing and hard, but beautiful.

I confess I didn’t read the difficult bit of this book. It was so obviously coming and I so didn’t want to go there… I very nearly put it down and sought out something less challenging, but I’m glad I didn’t: they rhythms of the language are beautiful, and if I hate (I really do) the ideas about dog training, nonetheless, the sense of humanity and connectedness that runs through this is heart-breakingly beautiful. Well worth the gap in the middle.

This is possibly my perfect book. Or I am it's perfect reader...I'm not sure which.

This was upsetting to read because the story focuses on a princess who is beaten and raped by her own father, runs away to survive a harsh winter alone in the mountains, where she is assisted by the magical Moon Lady, who gives her a dress made of deerskin. The dark subject material is handled well, because the princess eventually confronts her attacker and finds some emotional healing, but it's rough reading about all that pain and abuse.

Usually I love this author's books, but this one was not enjoyable because of the subject material. Her writing style is excellent, but there were many redundant paragraphs and too many details, which made the story slow.

DNF because this king beats then rapes his own full-blood daughter before planning to marry her and no, thank you, we're not tolerating any of that foul perversity today. What is wrong with you, Robin McKinley.

One of the biggest criticisms I have of myself is that I put too much stake in the vibes a book gives me when rating and reviewing it. A book could contain some of the most spectacular writing I've ever read or have the most relatable characters in all fiction, but that would mean nothing to me. I was afraid that this would be the case with Deerskin. I wasn't a fan of how much the book mirrored a traditional fairy tale in its grandiose writing style and characterization, but I can honestly say that my initial impression was not the cause of my one-star review.

The book just turned out to be shit.

As I mentioned before, the writing style threw me off early in the book. I love flowery writing as much as the next person, but I can only handle so much description at a time. That McKinley feels the need to force my face deep into the overgrown, pollen-infested meadow that is her writing displeases me greatly. (Zyrtec can only do so much, you know.) McKinley spends so much time in the book describing everything, dumping all these details on us, that she doesn't dedicate enough time trying to show us how the world and characters operate. Showing rather than telling may seem difficult, but it's much easier than it seems. One such tool that is incredibly helpful: dialogue.

There is dialogue in the book, rest assured. Unfortunately, McKinley builds Trumpian walls of description that must be climbed before her readers are able to read any dialogue between characters. The stylistic choices may not have bothered me so much had we been given more interesting details to absorb. Maybe I'm alone in thinking that it's silly for the beautiful queen to die because she discovers a wrinkle on her face, for example, but the book is so annoyingly unoriginal that I'm surprised I finished it.

Having said that, I understand that Deerskin is a reworked, expanded version of the tale "Donkey Skin." Why the book would be written in the style of a traditional fairy tale makes sense to me, but it feels less like a compelling retelling and more like a cheap mass-produced fan fiction sold at airports. It's not unusual for me to laugh at a book when I hate it, but Deerskin is just so ludicrous that I can't take it seriously.

And of course, there's the conclusion, which would have had my eyes rolling if I didn't have a condition similar to Liz Lemon's, wherein I roll my eyes so much that my ocular muscles may spasm and eject my eyeballs. (I would scream, "Spoiler alert!" as loudly as possible here, but the thing about fairy tales is that they're predictable.) Our protagonist Lissar gets her vengeance –– and in the process, has a massive period all over the throne room floor. I'll admit that I felt bad for laughing at this part, mostly because I felt like a middle schooler, but come on: how else was I supposed to react when I realized that I had waded through +300 pages of melodrama and mediocre writing just for the protagonist to bleed all over the floor (and then be randomly told that people in the future would consult the bloodstains as an oracle)? I'm still scratching my head over this choice.

Maybe I was too hard on Deerskin, but the book and I are just not a match made in heaven. I would recommend this to people for them to get a laugh too –– or maybe enjoy it, for we all have different tastes –– but it's not worth it. Go watch 30 Rock if you want a laugh.

I know I came across this book in my early teens. I can describe exactly where I saw it, and the cover (not the Kindle edition, I don't think e-readers existed then: it was the 1994 Ace mass market paperback, not in the best condition) came back to me instantly when I was browsing Goodreads, but... its contents? A total blank. I couldn't remember anything about the plot or characters or memorable scenes out of context. Was it so bad I threw it out of my memory banks? Was it too mediocre to waste brain cells on? Or was it the opposite, where it went over my head and thus disappeared into the fuzzy mists of forgetfulness? What the fuck, brain! Which was it!!

And then I (re)read it, and it still didn't jog any memories loose, but I'm gonna go with "good job protecting me from disturbing content, brain," because hoo boy that was rough. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it - where the entirety of a fantasy novel, no less, is given to the MC's recovery from rape and the resulting trauma; the absolute dragging minutiae of Lissar's escape and up through the cabin was super tough to read, and it was intended to be. I also don't know that I want to read it again, ngl. (I found the overt fantasy elements the most headscratchy; probably I still am not smart enough to Get It. The more things change, etc.)

is this a new fav?? i need to mull it over and see if i still think about it months later<3

DNF at about 50%. Super boring.

Whatever you do, don't read this book! I though it was awful! I don't know why anyone would write about this stuff, it was sad, depressing not to mention disgusting. The only reason I even gave it a one was so you could see that I didn't just forget to rate this book. I had enjoyed McKinley's other novels so much, but was very disapointed in this one.