Reviews with content warning for Violence - Midnight Robber

I fell in LOVE with the Midnight Robbers folklore/campfire style of storytelling. The narrator’s voice felt so comforting, even as they were telling you a dark story, it felt okay somehow… as if even if were scared, the narrator would always guide you in the right direction, towards a good story. Tan-Tan is a complex character who comes from many adversaries (maybe too many???) I would love to see this animated or in comic books because the imagery was fantastical and dark-whimsical, totally my cup of tea.

Content Warnings

jhbandcats's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense 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

4.5

Unlike anything I've ever read before, Midnight Robber is deceptively simple and straightforward, like a children's
story, but full of terrifying monsters. The worst monster of all is, of course, the human.

The girl Tan-Tan grows up in an aristocratic home on Toussaint, a Creole-like planet - but all is not well in this seeming paradise. Soon enough, she and her father are exiled to a prison planet just like Toussaint, but with poisonous plants and vicious, deadly animals, having to rely on the douens, the non-human natives, and their fellow prisoners to navigate their new life.

In many ways it's a horrifying coming-of-age tale yet there's a lot of love as well, especially in the lives of the douens. Their community is a gorgeous "city" of many homes in an enormous tree where everyone is satisfied with their lives. It reminded me of the movie Avatar, where the humans destroy anything beautiful because of their grasping, selfish nature, in contrast with the respectful natives living in harmonious coexistence with their home.

There's a lot more to it than that. A very thought-provoking read, one I may return to in a couple of years.

Content Warnings

bookcaptivated's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

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

3.75

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brianna_sinder's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

small_giant_plans's review

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challenging dark 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

3.5

Content Warnings

asweetdevouring's review

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

From the first lines of this book I was immediately hooked. The fast paced story and unique world building made it a difficult book to put down.

However, around the half way point the book takes an incredibly dark turn. While the author did a good job writing about such a disgusting act - clear without being unnecessarily graphic - it still casts a shadow over the entire book. Further, while I understand why the author chose the things that happened for Tan Tan so she could become the Robber Queen, I felt that there were other ways this could have been accomplished.

After THE ACT I felt as if the entire story simply became about violence and all of the interesting world building and unique creatures no longer really mattered as they became simply back drop decorations for a story that could just as easily have happened in our own world today.

The inserted parable chapters were really interesting and helped to break up the monotony that overtook the later half of the book, but overall it was just kind of depressing. All of the unique parts of the book became swallowed up by a story that, while shocking in its content, is also just generic in its violence.

Normally, I'm not usually one for giving trigger warnings but here I make an exception since the content really came out of nowhere in the story and then all of the story becomes about it. There is no "getting through" the one bad part.

Please click on the spoiler if you want to know the details of the content warning, which are MAJOR spoilers for the book. If you don't, just be aware that the book is very dark and is in absolutly no way suitable for any reader under the age of 16.

Since this is the CW section I won't dance around this. A 9 year old is repeatedly raped in this book by her father. The rape is not described but the author is very clear that it happened. There is also a 14 year old having an abortion, a graphic beating of a 16 year old, a graphic rape scene of a 16 year old, a short description of forced oral sex with a child, a 16 year old being forced to carry her rapist's child to term, and graphic gory descriptions of a live frog being eaten. The last doesn't seem like much based on the rest, but its very descriptive and long and I found it to be pretty stomach churning on top of everything else. The last 3rd of the story, and the ending, is also all about Tan Tan having to defend herself for finally defending herself against her rapist.

There are other pretty violent things that happen, but these are the big ones.

Midnight Robber is well written and parts of it are fascinating, but overall I found none of the great parts to be worth having to endure the violence the story delineates into and I did not find the ending to be as "hopeful" as I think the author intended it to be.

All of that being said, I will try another of Hopkinson's books, but this is not one I'd recommend or read again.

Content Warnings

octopus_farmer's review

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

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