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Reviews tagging 'Racism'

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64 reviews

emzhay's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

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

2.75

Cool concept. Poor execution. It was paced way too slow, and there’s no atmosphere or sense of fear. For a death game story, there’s very little gore. Most of the death are off screen. The characters are so vague that many of them blur together.

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heavy_sled's review

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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

0.25

Probably the worst book I have ever read. Not only does it fail at executing the basic building blocks of a story, it handles its intended message so poorly that it actually ends up being pretty offensive.

It would be generous to describe this as reading like a first draft. It reads like a summary of things that the author planned to put into a story. It very much feels like it was written in one sitting and sent off to be published with zero editing or input from anyone else.

I'm genuinely shocked the average rating of this book isn't way lower.

The writing is abysmal to the point of being incomprehensible at times. There are random fragments thrown in trying to act as full sentences, run-ons, completely out of place em dashes and parentheses, and just a general lack of understanding of how to write in a clear and fluid way. I don't think another human read this before it was published. There were so many points where I thought "No one edited this," because if they had, they would have pointed out how difficult it was to parse or how it just sounded bad or how it was confusing, etc.

The POV includes the thoughts of every character, literally jumping from one character's internal thoughts to another's paragraph to paragraph with zero indication or warning. Creative Writing 101 tells you not to do head hopping like this, but apparently this author didn't get the memo.

There really is no plot for most of the book. Nothing happens and then everything happens all at once.

The ending just goes into full on dream logic.

The characters escape the park and they could just leave. They have a car, they haven't been caught: they are home free! But instead, they come up with a convoluted plan that really doesn't have an ounce of logic. They make a deal with the untrustworthy woman running the whole operation, go back into the park, and they set the monster free. For no reason and with zero information on the possible ramifications. They don't know that the monster won't just be free to kill anyone it wants now, they could be damning everyone and they really just don't care.

But honestly, there isn't really an ending at all. The book just suddenly stops in the middle of a scene. It's ironic that the last line is "Who fucking cares" because I'm pretty sure that's what the author said when she was asked how the book was going to end.

Now on to my biggest problem with this book. Does something count as a theme if every so often you just blatantly rant your opinions at the audience without actually incorporating any meaningful discourse about the topic? Apparently this author thinks it does.

The topics she wanted to include are important ones, and they are far too important to treat this way.
It is so heavy handed and forced. It is just shoehorned into conversations throughout the book.
She creates these cartoonish villains who just outright say things straight off a right wing boomer's facebook page. They just randomly go off about "entitled youth" "the gays are bad" "insert racist/sexist thing here" and perfectly queue up the protagonists for a rehearsed take down. This is a twitter argument, this is not how people actually talk and behave, this is cringey and lazy and it is excruciatingly painful to read.

I feel embarrassed for this woman that she thought this was good. She should be embarrassed for writing this way. It's so over the top and preachy. She just outright states her opinions on things but does nothing with it. There is no nuance, there is no craft, there is no meaning. She should have just written essays on these topics because she lacks any kind of skill to weave them into a story. They don't matter to the plot and she doesn't say anything about them or ask questions or foster discourse. She just slaps a Gen Z's tweet in the middle of the page and moves on.

Worst of all is her attempt at anything involving race. She tries to include the topic of race, but has only two POC characters. But what race are those POC characters? SHE NEVER SAYS. And that is just a major red flag of performative allyship. This white woman wants to get brownie points for having POC in her story, but she conveniently doesn't say what race she is representing and therefore can't be called out for any potential stereotypes or offensive portrayals. It also means she doesn't have to do research or talk to POC from a specific group to make sure she creates good representation. Just like all her other political themes, it falls flat because she just offhandedly slaps it in there and calls it good enough.

The only good thing I can say after reading this book is that all aspiring authors should have more hope. If this can get published, anything can.

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ezwolf's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

This was kind of like Cabin in the Woods meets the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. But queer and with a dash of found family.

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traa's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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gellyreads's review

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

Overall, this book is really fun. It can get pretty preachy at times, but it doesn’t wear on me in a bad way. It’s just noticeable. I got a bit frustrated with the

monster concept. I loved the idea of invisible monsters and that it represents privilege and trickle-down economics, and how this country and the mostly white elite has prodigies off of slavery, bipoc, queer, disabled, and poor bodies. I just wish the description of the monster once it wasn’t invisible was cooler.

The amount of characters and the POV can be a bit jarring at first, but this grew on me. I also think the first half is weaker and a bit too slow for me compared to the second half.

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nithya_natalya's review

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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

4.0

Queer horror that centers on one of the things that I love about horror - how hopeful it can be, even in the bleakest of situations. It's a genre that is such a testament to how hard people are willing to fight just to live. Also, this really reminded me of Severance by Ling Ma. Very different style, but a similar critique of late stage capitalism, and the idea that younger gens must suffer, but also be grateful for the horrors created by greed. If you are fed up with your capitalist overlords, this is definitely a cathartic read.

My only struggle with this was that the author writes in third person omniscient and switches perspectives without chapter or page breaks. So on the same page, you'll get the thoughts and feelings of multiple different characters. Especially when first being introduced to the characters, being in one person's thoughts and then suddenly another's was a bit of whiplash and just generally confusing because there were so many characters to get to know.

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mosshaunt's review against another edition

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dark 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

2.5

reads like a YA novel written for adults. if you're like me and personally don't like typical YA writing conventions, keep that in mind.

too many characters, not enough time to meet them. lots of infodumps and while i didn't mind the first journal, the second journal and verbal exposition bloated the story for me.

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