Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

44 reviews

the_cheerful_necromancer's review against another edition

adventurous funny medium-paced

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

4.5

Ported over from my now-abandoned Goodreads:
I'm a sucker for an urban fantasy. A British-set urban fantasy chock full of geeky pop culture references, authentic slang, brilliant wit, quotable lines, genuinely tense mystery, an amazingly unique premise, excellently crafted magic system, lovable and complex characters, gloriously hateable villains- how could I possibly refuse? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Addiction

This book is a murder mystery. Many of those murders are graphically described, and at least one is seen in-progress:

a man murders his wife and infant child.

With regards to body horror, a main plot-point involves a gory magical injury:

the victim's face warps into an unnatural shape, damaging its structure irreversibly.

Note also that the main characters are a black male cop and a female cop, so there is some unpleasantness levelled their way. The narrative doesn't support it, of course.

aseel_reads's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious slow-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? It's complicated

2.0

This had promise, a supernatural force at the London police, investigating crime but man this wasn't great. Super slow and just kind of boring? Maybe better as a physical read but such a proling process for no reason as an audiobook. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Violence, Addiction, Blood, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Drug abuse, Islamophobia, Murder, and Rape

itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

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

2.75

This book was really promising and had a very strong start, but as things went on I think it suffered from having too many ideas that didn't mesh cohesively together. It resulted in a lot of repetition and a lot of descriptions of the main character walking, driving and running everywhere and limiting the interesting parts of the action (then again given he was a police officer, I'm not surprised).

Things I liked:

• Having a POC protagonist and going into detail about the struggles of his childhood was interesting.
• I really loved the idea that every river in London was represented by a character that was either chosen by the river or born into the family of rivers.
• I liked Nightingale's character and, ironically for a mystery book, the fact that his past wasn't spelled out and gave him some sorely needed intrigue. 

Things I didn't like:

• The protagonist didn't really have a strong character or any flaws that weren't certain characters bashing us over the head with "oh you have a shit home life and you fucked up your education" or "you need to be more focused". To me those aren't really flaws, or at the very least strong flaws that could cause interesting conflict in the story.
• On a similar side note,
  while it was nice to have the protagonist and the rivers be POC/mixed as generations went along, I feel like the author was trying to express how they were both African-British families from a different diaspora from one another, but didn't. The rivers family seem to have some kind of West African/Yoruba heritage, but the protagonist was just "African-British".
• As mentioned above, the story suffered from too many ideas that didn't mesh well together. In particular, I feel as if the story suddenly spinned into
  acting out the play of Punch and Judy, with the culprit being the ghost of an actor for Punch out of nowhere. 
  
  I think the author should have leaned more into the idea of people being forced to act out the roles of fictional characters if he wanted to include this element in the book
  . This also meant the titular rivers of London characters felt superfluous in a book that was named after them. The tensions between the two river families went nowhere and was an absolute waste.
• Part of me should have honestly expected this but some of the descriptions of the women were a bit leery.
• cw for rape
  Towards the end, a bit character ends up having part of his penis bitten off after trying to force himself onto someone and we're expected to sympathise with him. Nah mate, you got what you deserved for forcing yourself on someone.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Gore, Violence, Murder, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Child death, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Rape

coslyons's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Violence, and Body horror

imds's review

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Violence, Addiction, Gun violence, Murder, Racism, Child death, Blood, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Medical trauma

imlfox's review against another edition

This book is for white men. It was vaguely misogynistic and the narrator is unlikeable. Stopped at the point when two white police officers decided not to record a full witness statement from someone who’s just committed an assault because “someone might try and claim it was a racially motivated crime”. This was because what she said indicated that it was probably a racially motivated crime. Suggestion was this was just good common sense. Main character is creepy to his female coworker, thinks about sleeping with her constantly and gets an erection while hugging her after witnessing a traumatic family annihilation. She is “polite enough not to mention it”. This book was recommended to me by two white male friends. 0 stars just don’t. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Violence, and Misogyny

fionamatilda's review against another edition

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Sexism and Racism

catalyst226's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

This book was recommended to me by a librarian while I was browsing. He said, I think you'd like the audiobook, it's narrated by a Black British guy. 
Do I feel incredibly called out? Yes. Was this librarian right? Completely spot on. Loved the mixture of fantastic elements like magic, ghosts, etc with a crime investigation. (Shoutout to Elatsoe for introducing me to that in the first place). If you don't mind some pretty gruesome descriptions of violent crimes, check this out.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Body horror, Child death, and Gun violence

mags_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Blood, Gore, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Body horror, Medical trauma, Child death, Murder, and Physical abuse

Minor: Rape and Suicide

jacquy's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, and Death

Moderate: Gun violence and Sexism

Minor: Racism and Xenophobia