While Cathay almost springs to life as a full-blooded woman, in several ways she comes off as a breathing chunk of cardboard. But the author falls into several traps when it comes to portraying her black characters as well-rounded people (and is far, far worse at portraying the native American characters who appear later in the text), and sadly, stereotypes permeate the novel. The novel’s battle scenes are properly rousing, and the observations of army life feel realistic and work well, as do the well-detailed difficulties of posing as someone of the opposing sex. The book does do several things right, including the excellent points made about the way black men and women had to live through horrors and debasement, to eke out survival, and of the lies they were forced to tell to the white people they loathed to make it to some semblance of survival. Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen had so much potential. Sarah Bird misses the mark by a wide mile as she relates the real-life tale of Miss Cathay Williams (the author persists in misspelling her name as ‘Cathy’ throughout).
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