Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

4 reviews

tigger89's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

I've often said that speculative fiction is very much of the time it's written. Accordingly, this novel, begun in the mid-2010s and published in early 2022, is very much of our times. And yes, it is very political. How could it not be, with themes including eco crises, mass incarceration, white supremacy, class and racial privilege, healthcare inequality, police brutality, white flight, and gentrification? The job of good speculative fiction is to use a fictional narrative to illuminate something of our own time and place, and in that regard this book is stellar.

The book's biggest strength — its varied cast of characters, painting a picture of the future through several distinct narratives — unfortunately also contributes to its biggest weakness. This is due to the way the story is told, with the narratives fragmented and presented non-linearly. While I believe my sense of the whole is complete, or near enough, I'd honestly struggle to tell you, start to finish, what precisely befell each character in the story. There's nothing quite like seeing a character pop up in a scene and having to pause, confused, and think to yourself: "I thought he was dead by now!" I'm not sure that reading it again would help. I think I'd likely have to break out the index cards and start laying the plot out down the hallway to make complete sense of it. Honestly, some kind of dates on the sections would have helped, but that would have ruined the near-future feel of the disaster so I understand why the author left them out.

I also have to mention that this book frequently calls upon Christian themes, ones that go beyond the David and Goliath reference. It's not terribly surprising, given the historical role of spiritual leaders in community organizing, but based on what blurb you read it's easy to get caught off guard. I will say that the book was never preachy, so this is certainly the better kind of Christian-inspired fiction, but if you're someone who avoids such references for whatever reason you might want to give this title a pass.

On a similar note, there's something about the gay couple in this story that gave me pause. Specifically, it's that the only gay couples are among the colonizers. All of the people who'd been left behind on Earth were depicted, as far as I could tell, pursuing exclusively cis-het relationships. I know I'm prone to paranoid reading when Christianity and queerness meet, so I've spent a fair bit of time turning this over in my mind before I sat down to write this, to try to be as fair as possible about a book that, overall, I enjoyed. Ultimately, I don't see any evidence that the author was attempting to make a point by writing it this way. I'm not mad about it. But that doesn't mean that this doesn't have the potential to be disturbing to some readers, so I wanted to mention it.

Last, but not least...do the horses die? Mild spoilers ahead!

A handful of wild horses are rescued and adopted as community livestock. These horses later die in a stable fire. Their demise is not narrated in detail, but it's made clear that they don't survive.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Terminal illness, Colonisation, and Violence

Moderate: Cancer, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Police brutality, Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Gun violence, and Grief

Minor: Slavery, Pandemic/Epidemic, and War

fenouil's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

woahhhh, I like the writing, the concept of the book is inriguing, the reflections made can be applied elsewhere

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racism, and Blood

Moderate: Drug abuse, Racial slurs, Alcohol, Grief, Police brutality, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug use, Genocide, and Gun violence

schnaucl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

3.0

I really wanted to like this book more than I did.  Instead, I struggled with it to the point that it took almost two months to read, and it's not that long.   Part of it is just the physical structure of the book. There are four sections, one for each season, but no chapter breaks so it was sometimes difficult to find a natural stopping point.

I can't decide if it's not for me (in the sense that I'm not the intended audience), which is obviously fine but might be why I struggled with it.

It's very disjointed.  Purposely so, I think.  There are a lot of characters, who nearly all have their own backstories.  I often found myself really interested in a backstory about the time the backstory was wrapping up.  

The book had a lot to say about race and class and gentrification and the last season in particular is very bleak.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Drug use, Racial slurs, Racism, Cancer, Chronic illness, Classism, Murder, Terminal illness, Blood, and Police brutality

jo_lzr's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death of parent, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Alcoholism, Police brutality, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Alcohol, Colonisation, Drug use, Addiction, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Chronic illness, Classism, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Murder, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, War, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Child abuse, Addiction, and Infidelity

Minor: Rape