Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

236 reviews

holloween's review

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Gore, Racism, Rape, Blood, Grief, Cannibalism, and Murder

viatryx's review

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Child abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Torture, Vomit, Grief, Car accident, and Pregnancy

charlottenola's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

, I found this book intense and wonderfully disturbing.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Grief, and Murder

mollyrook's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

This one was a hard one for me to review, because in lots of respects it is an incredible book and a brilliant look at what a dissolving US could look like. But I didn't actually love it. I found the Earthseed religion part of it distinctly uncompelling—why does this 18-year-old think she has stumbled on the truth of the universe and is going to gather a whole religion of followers? It doesn't ring true for me. I would have preferred it if her following grew just because she was a good person, and her philosophy developed along the way.

Also, even if she had to grow up far too soon, Lauren didn't feel like a teenager at any point to me. She was too eloquent, too reasonable, too consistently level-headed. Her language also felt too old—no teenager says that someone "soiled themself." I think she would have been more compelling as a young adult because she wouldn't have felt as anachronistic to me.

So, I didn't love it, which is disappointing because I expected to. Still very glad I read it, though.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

pweav's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I will never get tired of this series. So incredibly well done and such truly prophetic work that made Octavia Butler my favorite author of all time.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Sexual violence, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Gore, Incest, Racism, Rape, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, and Abandonment

imperatorprincess's review

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

If you don't like this book within the first fifteen pages, I'd advise putting it down.  It's so relentless and extreme in the vibe it sets that those who don't like it at first won't find anything else waiting for them.  I landed somewhere in the middle, just like most of this book.  The characters are decently sympathetic but not fleshed out well (there's just too many for the book's own good).  The worldbuilding is intriguing but so unflinchingly nihilistic that it's hard to feel anything.  After a while I'm no longer horrified, much less compelled, but just numb to all the violence and waiting for something, anything, to provide a spark of hope.  Luaren's Earthseed plan might fit the bill if she made any concrete efforts to progress it or actually used it to better other people's lives, which she doesn't seem to care about all that much.  I wasn't horribly disappointed, and I can see why some folks adore this series.  All I can do is shrug.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Misogyny, Police brutality, and Pregnancy

Minor: Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, and Alcohol

bekreadz7's review

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore and Gun violence

Moderate: Child death, Death, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Torture

lemonsaurus's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

"A sower went out to sow their seed; and as they sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell upon the thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit an hundredfold. " - The Bible, Authorized King James Version, St. Luke 8 5-8

This is a classic for a reason, and should be required reading, frankly. The present Butler describes is only scifi in that it was speculative in the time she wrote it. While things are not this bad in the US yet, I still qualify that with the word 'yet', and the many parallels to our current situation are a constant reminder that we may not be walking in the general direction of North through the rotting corpse of our country, but we are within a stones throw of it. Lakes dried down to fractions of their former size is actively occuring, drinking water is scarce and only getting scarcer. We have a president named a version of Don, elected in 2024, on the platform of "Make American Great Again", in some cases gladly offering up our own rights in the name of a promise so esoteric and decoupled from our actual current situation it almost feels like we place votes on what best fantasy novel we want to believe is true the most. 

"I wish you could have known this country when it was still salvageable"

The question begs, if the country ultimately ended up in the situation it was in, was it ever really salvageable? 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Slavery, Violence, Mass/school shootings, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Trafficking, Cannibalism, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Chronic illness, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Incest, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, Colonisation, and Classism

sabiecee's review

dark emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Jarring, real, and thought-provoking. Having a hard time to coming to terms with it still.
The main character's relationship at the end and the weird age gap is making me really uncomfortable though, and I'm hoping that doesn't last long in the next book 😭

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Trafficking, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

catz0rz's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism