Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

5 reviews

deetabz's review

adventurous funny sad fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Blood

Moderate: Grief, Death, Violence, War, and Animal death

devynreadsnovels's review

adventurous challenging funny inspiring mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Blood, Body horror, Death, and Violence

gilnean's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Cursing, Body horror, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, and Blood

Moderate: Medical content, Death, and Animal death

Minor: Vomit, Classism, Colonisation, Rape, Infertility, Child abuse, War, Emotional abuse, and Sexual assault

ninjamuse's review

challenging emotional slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Mental illness

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Blood

booksthatburn's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective medium-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

Lynesse braves her mother’s wrath to beg help from the sorcerer in his tower to fight demons invading the land. Nyr awakens after 200 years asleep to discover that his one big adventure is now history, and he must decide whether to help once more, or to retreat into his anthropologist’s detachment.

The worldbuilding blew me away. There’s a well-described communication gap between the main characters. It’s beautifully executed, and is such a wonderful way to portray artificially-assisted translation in real time. This means that for everything that’s happening, the two main characters have unique vocabulary for describing the scene and different understandings of what’s relevant. It generates depth and meaning in the narrative through something that sci-fi often handwaves away. 

The narration is asymmetric, Nyr narrates in first person but Lynesse narrates in third person. This could mean anything from slightly favoring Nyr’s version of events to indicating that whatever Lynesse is speaking doesn’t translate into first person the way Nyr’s thoughts do. Nyr deals with technologically-assisted disassociation, meant to help him cope with stress in the moment and then exacting a heavy toll later. Narratively, this works to show the level of technological entanglement Nyr has on a moment-to-moment basis, distancing himself from the locals even while he’s helping them. 

This is excellent, a story which uses the genre entanglement of sci-fi and fantasy to its utmost, creating something that couldn’t happen with either alone.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Body horror, Animal death, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Blood, Infertility, Emotional abuse, and Vomit