Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon

29 reviews

kbirdie's review

dark hopeful reflective 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Sexual harassment

tinysierra's review

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“I open the back door to let the dogs out, and Nadua's got her gardening shears buried like a knife in one of my fiancé's wings.” pg 1

I love Wyatt as a narrator. He is so funny.

Book 10 for the
#TransRightsReadathon2024

CW: Wyatt is a vomiter when stressful things happen

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Death, Genocide, Gore, Homophobia, Infertility, Panic attacks/disorders, Terminal illness, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Drug use and Racial slurs

simplyammee's review against another edition

adventurous 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Hate crime, Infertility, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Suicide, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Deadnaming, Panic attacks/disorders, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Blood, and Gaslighting

Check the tw!! The deadnaming & misgendering in this book are done very compassionately

discarded_dust_jacket's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

This is a solid YA fantasy, don’t get me wrong. I think it has some strong elements as well as some it could’ve executed better. But overall, I did enjoy reading it. I finished it in a day.

The queer representation was good. I empathized with Wyatt—his self-loathing, his anger, his tendency to lash out instead of facing his emotions, and his selfishness—even when he frustrated me SO MUCH.

I did like a lot of the secondary characters as well, but overall it seemed like the author was so focused on examining Wyatt’s internal struggles that not enough focus was spent on making any of the other characters very nuanced or multi-dimensional. (Tessa’s arc is, I think, meant to involve growth and development, but it comes across more as a clumsy and sudden about face.)

I also didn’t think the author did a good enough job of making us understand why Emyr found a marriage to Wyatt so necessary that he was willing to force him into it under penalty of death. It just didn’t feel fleshed out enough to read as believable, which gave the entire premise of the story a sort-of unmoored quality. (Maybe multiple POVs would have helped here?)

Plus I felt like a lot of the plot development got squished into the last 20% or so of the book, making it read very much like an attempt to quickly tie up lose ends and insert twists where they didn’t feel necessarily natural just to set up the events of the second book. (The big “aha!” moment at the end when the villain is confronted felt very similar to the end of a Scooby-Doo episode: “and I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”)

Finally, a lot about the way witches in this story are born to (and subsequently rejected by) Fae families seemed to be an allegory for the queer experience, especially when at one point, that similarity is explicitly pointed out on page by Wyatt.

You have the Fae (conservative) businesses refusing service to the witches, then the guard (police) siding with the Fae when they protest/incite violence against witches using language most readers would immediately associate with white supremacists. 

But at the same time, this allegory breaks apart when you consider this magical realm is also supposed to exist WITHIN the current, human world (and that there also exist Fae queer people). If an allegory is meant to be a fictional representation of a real-world people, institution, or concept, how can that allegory exist in a fictional story where the very real thing it’s meant to be representing ALSO exists? So maybe it’s not meant to be allegory at all, I don’t know, but I found my confusion over it very distracting as I was reading.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Deadnaming, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Terminal illness

Minor: Infertility

mxemma's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

This book was enjoyable in some ways, but suffers from a whole lot of tonal dissonance. It felt like every couple of pages we swung from fluffy fanfic romance (there was only one bed!) to horrifying gore and betrayal. The writing itself is beautiful, but I think cutting a few lines and a couple plot-twists would have made the story flow more smoothly and strengthened the book as a whole. They may be setting up the sequel, but the ending felt rather abrupt because of it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Gore, Hate crime, Racism, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Police brutality, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, and War

Minor: Deadnaming, Pregnancy, and Dysphoria

stormeno's review

adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Dysphoria, and Classism

Minor: Drug use and Alcohol

ryankaybee's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective 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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Deadnaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Transphobia, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

zoepagereader's review

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring relaxing sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

I was so incredibly close to bailing on this. The few chapters of this book left me in a mix of wanting to read but feeling like everyone word was dragging me through molasses. In the end though, I stuck through it and after about 100 pages, the plot made it worth while.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Deadnaming, Gore, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

sglance9's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Bullying, Deadnaming, Emotional abuse, Transphobia, Violence, and Police brutality

Minor: Infertility and Colonisation

lyd41's review

adventurous funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted slow-paced

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

4.0

This was a super fun read. The protagonist is hilarious and I love the inner monologue from this writer. Literally I was laughing the entire book. Even with how funny it was,  the plot and characterizations never suffered! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Deadnaming, Death, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gore, Infertility, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicide, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

Moderate: Transphobia, Vomit, and Police brutality

Minor: Genocide, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Torture, Stalking, and Pregnancy