Review: The Taken

The Taken by Vicki Pettersson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I liked this book, and found the protagonists appealing. However, I also had a few major complaints, which are also spoilers. They also deserve a trigger warning, I think.

If you want to find out, read on: To help explain my objections to this book, it might be useful for you to know that I'm not a Christian. I do not practice any faith, so I do not claim any either. However, I was raised in a Catholic household, and I'm a scholar of the Gothic. As a scholar, I have seen the way that those books demonized the Catholic faith. In the early nineteenth century in England, Catholics and Jews were dangerous others that did not deserve full voting rights. Convents were depicted as merciless jails where families imprisoned their daughters against their will. Superstition ran rampant. According to those Gothic writers, no Catholic was logical. It pains me to see such religious stereotypes still in use today--although now our Christian other is the Mormon.

Here's the big spoiler: the villain is a Mormon politician. (The timing of the book's publication is also therefore suspect--I can say this as someone that doesn't even like Romney.) The big problem with Pettersson's portrayal of her Mormon villain is that she also makes him sexually deviant. He is a polygamist and runs what amounts to a sexual bacchanal in his basement. Pettersson is playing with the worst stereotypes of Mormons--the idea that they're polygamists and that they allow others to sexually abuse their daughters. This is the modern version of the Gothic stereotype of a priest using a convent as his personal supply of women. She does try to clarify that her villain is unique and not representative of all Mormons by having a trusted character as a Mormon as well. However, that character is only outed as Mormon at the very end of the book, and readers never see how his faith shapes his character at all.

Finally, I was disturbed by the emphasis on rape throughout the book. More big spoilers ahead! It is a constant threat, although one that is downplayed often. I want to say that Pettersson wrote about rape with the appropriate gravity, but the more I think about the book, the less I can justify that stance. Despite realizing that she was almost the victim of a sexual assault, the female protagonist seems to have no reaction to the event. She moves out of her house (temporarily) for safety, but that isn't traumatic either. My home was burglarized years ago, and I dealt with it very well. Even without the physical assault (no one was there when the thieves broke into my home), I still had more mental trauma than Kit did after a physical assault--within her bedroom--that almost became sexual. Also, the "rape festival" (pardon the name--I can't think of any other way to describe it) at the end of the book is just too much. A number of unnamed but respected citizens engage in an auction to buy a pubescent teen's virginity (against her will) and sit back to watch a gang rape as pre-auction entertainment. Of course, everyone is saved and nothing bad happens. I can't help but think that it's just too easy. Sexual danger is a constant part of paranormal fiction, but it's frequently invoked only because the idea of it is horrific. If a writer is unwilling to go through the follow through--the recovery, the work to heal and regain trust in others--writers need to stop using rape or the threat of rape as a plot device.

I do think I will read the next book in the series, as my complaints are likely to apply to this book and this book only. I do wish that I didn't have them at all though.



View all my reviews