Down the River unto the Sea (King Oliver, 1)

The protagonist is not at all likable and the character descriptions do more harm than good. King, while being accused of an assault that he didn't commit, deserved worse than what he got. Consensual or not, an on-duty police officer having sex with a suspect is an outrageous abuse of power. He had a reputation for having a wandering eye, despite him being married, so it wasn’t hard for someone to put an attractive woman in his path because he’d instantly fall for her. Also, King was falsely accused of rape, but he doesn’t care when his daughter threatens to tell everyone that Coleman walks in when she is in the shower. Character descriptions always include skin color and clothing, but there are lots of minor characters, too many names, and very little history to distinguish between them. Having so little to go on makes it hard to remember who is who and will have you constantly flipping back to check. Women in this story are always described with an extra factor, though, and that's their physical appearance and body type. Even his 17-year-old daughter can't escape constant objectification. The wife is painted as a villain for abandoning him after he had cheated on her many times and then she was shown what appeared to be absolute evidence that he was a rapist. After everything, Monica apparently admitted to Aja that she was in the wrong. Aja tells King how her mother says that she should not have abandoned him after the rape accusations, that he was: "a good man and she knew it," and that they: "should have worked it out." This reinforces the false idea that King didn't do anything wrong. In King's mind, Monica shouldn't have believed that he was a rapist, despite the video, but known he was “just” a cheater. I kept hoping that King would realize how terrible his behavior had been, but his wife is the one who eventually apologizes to him. In chapter 26, King is questioning a woman who he just described a couple pages prior as: "one of the most beautiful women I, or the dog in me, had ever seen [...] Her figure denied the garment and, I was sure, had betrayed her again and again from the AGE OF THIRTEEN." When they are talking, he mentions: "When she sat down across from me I started to think about Aja. My DAUGHTER was a beautiful woman with curves and class and a smile that made you happy." King very graciously tells his daughter that she can do what she wants, so she doesn't have to listen when he lectures her about her clothing. She of course has to say: "But you're almost always right, Daddy!" Before this happens, throughout the book, King is constantly slut shaming her for what she is wearing, both aloud and in his head. She wears tight blouses and miniskirts and, at one point after being shamed by King, hugs herself to cover her body in embarrassment. The book was just barely interesting enough to keep me reading the entire way through, but the writing style wasn't good enough to save the story. If the author's intention was to make the characters unlikable and have it so you don't root for anyone the entire way through, he succeeded.