Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

66 reviews

fatherofmysteries's review against another edition

dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

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

5.0

There is no review I could write that could begin to sum up the journey that this book took me on

He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Antisemitism, Stalking, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, and Death of parent

matthewgrayson's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny reflective sad 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

5.0

You shouldn't read this book if you:

• Struggle with graphic depictions of violence and gore
• Don't like stories that focus on characters of low moral character
• Do not like poetic writing
• Are uncomfortable with allusions to child abuse and pedophilia
• Are offended or uncomfortable with realistic depictions of historical racism
• Avoid occasional nudity in literature
• Do not like stories based in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico in the 1800's
• Want something light to read
• Are nihilistic or are prone to nahilism

You should read this book if you:

• The above list can be tolerated
• Have a strong moral compass
• Are able to analyze and find meaning in the literature you consume

Version:

• Audiobook (Borrowed through the Libby app)
• Publisher: Recorded Books Inc. 
• Narrator: Richard Poe

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West is about:

• The moral degradation and depravity of man after reaching the pinical of its societal achievement
• War
• Peoples, cultures, and groups striving to live up to the supposed achievements their predecessors with only the knowledge of their virtues and the absence of their faults
• The results of pride, racism, natural justice (or the justice of God), alliances with the immoral and depraved, colonization, genocide, violence, greed, nihilism
• Those that dance, and those that do not dance
• 
  

The most brutal violence is abrupt and sometimes out of nowhere. The book does not relish in the violence, but rushes the violence in a concentrated burst. It can be jarring, however, it helps illustrate the sudden finality of life and how something can be so quickly made into nothing... (unfinished)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, and Murder

jimbo_cheezemas's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

siggney's review against another edition

dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, and War

angelinalaramie's review against another edition

challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.5

This is a near impossible book to review. How do you review a book that represents so much about America and the human condition? How can you review the horrors presented? This book should be required reading for everyone. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Racism, and Sexism

Moderate: Pedophilia, Xenophobia, and War

blueshirt's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Beautiful book about horrible people doing horrible things.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, and War

Minor: Child abuse and Pedophilia

vinett's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Racial slurs, Racism, Murder, and War

Minor: Pedophilia

asuresh's review against another edition

dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Sexual harassment, and War

taicantfly's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

A heartbreaking book that chronicles the violence and colonial depravity that went into building the American empire. 

Structurally, it is brilliant. A narrative with the rhythm of its plot, self-similar, meandering, filled with neologisms and words so archaic I had to change dictionary app on my phone, almost hostile to its reader at points. Perfectly isomorphic to a drunken odyssey of carnage through the desert, going nowhere, collecting scalps along the way. The descriptions are vivid and inimitable, leaving me open-mouthed in awe when directed at desert still life and open-mouthed in horror when directed at the intricacies of the corpses of innocents.

It is told from the perspective of The Kid, in my view a representation of the American people. At the start of the book, before the colonial violence begins en masse, these people are nothing more than starving and disposable serfs, isolated from their metropole (the Kid's mother dead) and surrounded by a pre-existing and justifiably hostile ecosystem of Indigenous peoples ("Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves.") The Kid soon finds the simplicity of violence, a seemingly omnipresent phenomenon and often a means of achieving if not a living wage (hence his stint in the army) substantial riches. Likewise, American civilians soon find they can subsist and blossom off of the violence of slavery and the genocide of natives. Before long violence becomes the Kid's default state, never questioning. He is intrinsically inseparable from the events of the book as both witness and participant, but there will be chapters where his name appears only twice or thrice. Always present, always entangled in immeasurable violence, always detached from the situation at hand. This dichotomy of invisibility and obviousness is one of the most delicious nuances of the book.

As a demonic figure in symbiosis with the manpower the Kid and those like him provide, there is the Judge, inhuman, polite, sadistic, polymathic. He represents the ideological side of American colonial violence, one that is not nihilistically living a cycle of violence he has become too accustomed to to abandon, but a visionary whose motives for violence are wholly expansionist. Seeking genuinely complete control over the physical and mental spheres, as did American expansionism with its murderous westward pilgrimage, he (and by extension the colonial status quo) cannot tolerate threats to his (and its) authority. For this reason he massacres tribes, scapples away ancient paintings. Hell, he says it best himself:

"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth."

A genocidal fervour like this will only feed off of anything it is given - the Judge, as the violence in the book intensifies, seems to be less and less human, almost immortal, almost omnipresent. Thus is the American colonial-turned-imperialist mentality, in McCarthy's depressed candour, similarly immortal. At the end of the book, the Judge rapes(?) and kills the Kid, the colonial drive turned inwards towards the American populace, a grim prediction of an empire's violence leading to its own downfall. I've rarely seen a metaphor so consistent and incisive as that of the interplay between Kid and Judge and it speaks volumes to McCarthy's writing.

This was the first McCarthy book I read and I was by no means disappointed. A flawless, soul-crushing and very difficult read which I would not recommend to anyone struggling with misanthropic thoughts. This is the kind of book that has no replacement, and if not for its deeply traumatising contents, I'd make it mandatory reading in schools.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, and Classism

mymorie's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-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? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail