Emily A. Duncan: A Report

DISCLAIMER: First, this report, unlike my book reviews, is subject to change/updates as new information becomes available.  Second, and I will mention this again later, but I want to put this upfront, in case you never get to where this, contextually, comes up: I am in no way accepting, or not accepting, apologies made by Emily Duncan.  It is not my place.  The goal of this is to present the information I found when their problematic accusations came to light back in April to help others make their own educated decision.  My personal opinion can be found near the end of this post, but I am purely reacting to the information presented to me the only way I can – as someone who isn’t in one of the communities impacted, but who strongly believes in accountability rather than blind cancel culture.  I did this for my own “homework” to make an educated decision rather than a blind, bandwagon one.  Please also understand that I am in no way trying to minimize the hurt felt by anyone by boiling things down to facts.

Before starting this post, I want to be clear: I am not a journalist, I am not an expert, nor should any of my work here be considered as anything close to that. I am simply a reader, and book review writer, who decided I wanted to learn more and look more into authors that have been brought to my attention as problematic, which turned into a deeper look at “cancel culture” in general, which can be found here. I will be covering other information and answers to questions I’m anticipating you, my reader, might have nearer the end of this. Of course, I am always open to questions not addressed here, as well as try to expand on any answer I provide that you may find lacking. I’m always open to [respectful] communication. I just ask that you be that – respectful. Also, apologies for the length of this, but, I promise, it’s long because of the amount of content, and I feel all of it deserves to be showcased and shared. I also won’t be blocking names/handles/identities here at the time of the original posting. I want to assist the victims who have come forward to boost their voices where I can.

If you happened to notice, I didn’t do a book review on Emily Duncan’s first book, Wicked Saints. Why is that? Part of it is because I wasn’t running this blog when I read that book for the first time. However, if memory serves, I read it again right before reading the ARC of Ruthless Gods. I still didn’t post a review then. Mainly because, while I didn’t dislike it, I wasn’t moved to write a review on it. [I should also like to add that, at the time of reading Wicked Saints, I hadn’t read any Grishaverse books or Children of Blood and Bone, both of which have been mentioned in Goodreads reviews that this series is a copy/rip-off/etc. of.] Ruthless Gods, however, I admit I did enjoy – at least, a majority of it. I still can’t put my finger on why, though. It was enough to push me to complete the trilogy, preordering my copy a good while before the release date. You’ll notice I didn’t share my unboxing of that book on my bookstagram, and that’s because of information that was introduced to me.

Information I didn’t previously have.

I don’t consider myself an ignorant or uneducated person. That said, recent reports on “problematic authors” has educated me on subjects I previously had no idea about. Not that I had ignored or brushed aside or excused, but straight up had never heard about.

What was that, you ask? Blood libel. I’ve literally never heard about it before these reports about Emily A. Duncan and her work surfaced in April, right around the release of the final book in her trilogy.

For those as unfamiliar with blood libel as I was/am, I’m including a screenshot from antisemitism.adl.org. For loading issues, since this post will be picture heavy, I’ll also write out what the screenshot says after the photo below:

“A major theme in antisemitic thought and propaganda is the blood libel, the myth that Jews murder non-Jews, especially non-Jewish children, in order to use their blood to perform religion rituals. Most prevalent in the medieval and early modern period, this peculiar accusation has plagued Jews and incitted violance against them for centuries.”

Blood libel issues:
~ Describing the Vultures as Jew-coded [dark hair, dark eyes, “vermin-like”]
~ The “king” of the “bad guys” [the Vultures] in the books has a Jewish/based-in-Hebrew name, not a Slavic one [Malachiasz]

But her problematic areas don’t just stop at blood libel. She has also taken to bullying people on Twitter. I won’t attempt to touch her motivation for doing so, but I will be sharing some of that bullying here. Because some of the bullying, antisemitism, and racist information is usually intertwined, I’m listing them together.

Bullying/antisemitism/racist issues:
~ Accusations of being a part of a group chat that shares “snippets” of smaller authors’ work to mock it
~ Accusations of bullying/”attacking” an Asian author [calling them ugly and trashing their book because they had similar themes and were supposed to release on the same week on a platform called Slack]
~ Accusations of her making comments at cons to her Jewish readers, about being surprised that they hadn’t been accused of being antisemitic

That being said, I did uncover someone who took this to their Rabbi, and below is a screenshot of the thread relating to that conversation:

I’d also like to include that she has come forward and apologized, self-identifying that her remarks were racist and that there’s no excuse for it. While I’m not saying this magically makes everything better, I would be remiss if I didn’t include it. So here it is!

I won’t touch whether I believe this apology is authentic, since I’ve heard that going around. I’m also not the intended audience for this apology, so my opinion on the authenticity of it isn’t relevant, and I’m not saying one way or the other if it should be enough to forgive her.

Anticipated Questions

Why didn’t you include a scrub of the Goodreads reviews on her books?
Fair question! Mainly because, while I did perform that scrub, and I did so on all three books, I concentrated mainly on Wicked Saints, since the potentially antisemitic content isn’t “reversible” after Wicked Saints. In order for it to have been potentially caught and “remedied”, it would have had to happen pre-pub of the book. While, in reality, books are finalized and sent to the printer a good while before the pub date, I included every review, up to and on pub day, and only found 1 reviewer containing antisemitic content. While I’m in no way saying one voice holds no power, there’s 75 1-star, pre-pub reviews alone, not including the other star ratings pre-pub. While it’s a stat, and there was the one, it was just one. The decimal representation of that comment/review is so tiny, I don’t think even a scientist would consider it viable data to use, as they would see it as an outlier, not as something to take note of. Which, in this case is sad, but true.

But I looked at some of the pre-pub reviews and found more than one. Why are you lying?
I’m not lying, but it’s hard to figure out what was present pre-pub and what wasn’t. If the review states something like ,”Update”, especially without a date, I have to assume it was post-pub. Many reviews I found that mentioned antisemitic content [and I did look beyond pre-pub, even though I wouldn’t have shared it here], they’re mostly all updated notes added in the last year and a half. While I’m trying to do right be the hurt communities Wicked Saints and the series impacted, I have to be unbiased and handle this the way I would an experiment, and this is the result.

If you do update this, will you be sharing that on your booksta account?
As long as I’m still active there and haven’t been canceled or have for some other reason left but keep running this blog [which is a definite possibility, I won’t lie], I most likely will. The only way I could see that I wouldn’t is if the update doesn’t impact my opinion/actions going forward. For example, if they come back and make more trouble or publish another book but haven’t “redeemed” themselves in the meantime, I may [if I’m away of the new development, I will, but I may miss it, as I did in 2020] return to add the new content, but more trouble will likely only entrench me further in my opinion that they’re problematic, and I won’t be supporting them. But if they somehow redeem themselves, and I return to update this page, I’m 99% certain I would update my booksta somewhere. It might not be a post, but instead a story slide, but I would almost definitely announce it, yes.

There’s content you missed. Would you mind me messaging you links to it for you to then add here?
I have nearly no doubt that I’ve missed things, I’m only human. So long as you present the new content to me respectfully and kindly, I have absolutely no problem with that. It would be helpful if you have a link to whatever the content is, or unaltered/uncropped screenshots of the content, if it’s somewhere I can’t get on my own [a private Facebook group I’m not in, etc.], but it’s not 100% necessary. That said, if you present me with new content but can’t provide me a link and/or screenshots, and I’m unable to access it on my own, I won’t be able to add it here. Also, thank you for wondering, your support on my project here being the best and most thorough it can be is wonderful!

I want to discuss some of the stuff you posted here. May I?
Just like I mentioned waaaaaaay at the beginning, as long as you’re respectful about it, you absolutely may! I’ve already gotten a bunch of messages about my Cancel Culture post, and I welcome them all, even the ones who are weary or disagree with me, because everyone has been respectful so far! For that, I thank you, and I look forward to speaking with you about this further! Who knows – maybe our conversation will impact one of these posts!

My opinion: At this current time, Emily A. Duncan is problematic, of that I have very little doubt is a fact. Because, even if she didn’t intend for her books to be antisemitic in content, her bullying/treatment of BIPOC authors [to which she has taken responsibility for an included in her apology] would land her squarely in the “problematic” category in my book as a person, being an author aside. While this is fairly early on in her career, and, like other authors who have been identified as doing problematic things but has made changes and since improved themselves, she does have the possibility of improving. That said, there is enough here that I won’t be sharing any pictures of her work on my bookstagram nor publishing further reviews of her books, current or any upcoming ones, for the foreseeable future. If you do see her work coming up, there is either an update I have posted, or there will be shortly after her work is shared again. I won’t be taking down my review of Ruthless Gods [I believe all that removing the review does is leave people wondering if I read the book], but I will be adding a disclaimer note and reference to this post [I won’t have the link to this until after I post it, which is the only reason it hasn’t already been done]. Please note that I am in no way calling her actions acceptable, her apology “enough”, or that I currently have intentions of doing either in the future. I am just stating that people can change, and I’m keeping that door open [though, honestly, it’ll be more “cracked” rather than wide open, in this case, as I’m skeptical]. With very few exceptions, I believe everyone is capable of changing and improving, but they have to want to, and I don’t personally know if she does.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t know if this will change in the future, but, at the time of writing this, Emily A. Duncan’s Twitter lists her preferred pronouns as she/they. My majority use of “she” throughout this post isn’t meant to be a dismissal of their preferences, but rather to prevent confusion between referring to Emily [“she”] vs her readers [“they”], and, with their currently stated “she/they”, I thought it an effective way to decrease confusion. I acknowledge and don’t intend to lessen stated preferences. If their preferences change in the future, and this blog is still active, I will do my best to return and update the pronouns accordingly.