Review: Work on racial portrayals
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 7, 2012
I'm not the most politically correct person, but the early part of this book basically came across as racist. It was no single item, just one thing after another that added up. The white superhero (has a magic ring) fights off evil Asian gang members. OK, perhaps; there are Asian gangs. But the hero also ponders his run-ins with various other  drug dealers, every single one of them minority. Major reality problem 1, given the white-dominated meth production in the Midwest. A little later, 2 criminals are introduced, and while the white one is bad but not *that* bad (the text actually says this), the black one is hateful and evil. There are also some issues with how minority speech is portrayed.I'm not making any judgments whether the author intended this or not. I'm just saying it is (a) unnecessary to write this way, to have a good plot, and (b) fixable, especially if stories are shown to a little more diverse group of people prior to publication, for feedback. I don't think it would lose much of the core audience that already is a fan of these books, and it potentially helps the author's sales by opening readership up to a much larger demographic who otherwise are going to stop reading, like I did. And I'm probably part of the target audience for these books, in terms of my age and race and sex.