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Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'
Godblind: The Godblind Trilogy, Book One by Anna Stephens
2 reviews
aroace_ants's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Ok so, the premise was great, the third quarter was fantastic so much shit was happening. love. The writing style was meh. The first section of the book has more challenging themes mentioned casually - rape, sexual assault, sexual (gendered) violence, yada yada - it got les through your the book but you have to read through a bit of it to get to the good plot. Considered dnfing just less that halfway through, glad I didn’t.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, War, Sexism, Slavery, Rape, Sexual assault, Gore, and Body horror
Moderate: Death, Sexual violence, Death of parent, Gore, Blood, Animal death, and Slavery
Minor: Blood
bellaob's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
This felt like the book of a new author who wanted to go for gritty adult epic fantasy but had no idea how to actually achieve that beyond making things gory and graphic, and upping the word count. Everything about it felt very half baked and the overall effect read more like YA despite the darker elements.
Firstly, the characters are extremely flat. Telling the story from 10+ POVs is extremely ambitious, and here really worked against the book. The chapters from each POV were so short and so bitty that we don't really get the chance to know or particularly care about any of the characters. Their voices are also not all distinct enough from each other to give much differentiation between who is narrating at a given time.
There appears to be no particular motivation for anything/anyone except unrestrained religious zeal. This would have been off-putting even if the religions were complex and fleshed-out, which astoundingly they were not at all, despite being the only topic of conversation and conflict for the entire book. There is the "bad, dark, blood" religion and the "good, kind, light" religion, and we really never get much more insight than that.
The world-building is rudimentary. There are 3 main groups of people, but we don't really learn much about their culture, history, traditions, dress, mythology, or really anything about them apart from who worships which religion. In terms of settings, we don't get much description of any of the places. The only thing I can conjure up in my mind after reading is that the main city in the "good" country is composed of concentric rings. There are certainly no evocative or interesting details about any of the settings to set the mood of the world.
The short chapter structure and rapidly shifting POVs also have a wider effect on the book, beyond the lack of connection with the characters, in making the pacing extremely strange. The whole story is told at essentially the same pace, whether the chapter is detailing a kiss between two of the characters, a major plot reveal, or a battle. There is no variation, leading to no peaks and troughs in tension, and the strange sense that the 'real' story has yet to begin, despite being most of the way through the book and multiple major plot points having occurred. All of the reveals fall flat because they are very much told rather than shown. The lack of a real sense of who the characters are also makes it less shocking when they are revealed to be on the 'bad' side, and the lack of any motivation for this switch makes them uninteresting one-dimensional 'baddies', as if in a children's story.
The fast pace and inability to stick with any one POV also means that the romance storylines have absolutely zero development, managing somehow to be both predictable and spring into life from absolutely nowhere. This is another example of the extreme showing rather than telling, and if anything makes the characters even less compelling and believable.
Honestly the only part of this which was actually well-written was the fight scenes. This coming from someone who has never punched someone let alone been in a battle so take with a pinch of salt. But the variety and severity of injuries sustained seemed a bit more realistic than some I have read before.
Finally, I think it is in quite poor taste to leave every plot point/character on a massive cliffhanger at the end of the book. I don't think it is worth my while to finish the series so it feels like I have just ended up wasting my time reading a whole lot of nothing. It's a thumbs down from me. Just goes to show that a lot more goes into writing a good book than an idea and the ability to string sentences together. I feel that the overall impression here is of something at the amateur end of the grimdark fantasy genre, which is missing a lot of necessary editing and restructuring.
Firstly, the characters are extremely flat. Telling the story from 10+ POVs is extremely ambitious, and here really worked against the book. The chapters from each POV were so short and so bitty that we don't really get the chance to know or particularly care about any of the characters. Their voices are also not all distinct enough from each other to give much differentiation between who is narrating at a given time.
There appears to be no particular motivation for anything/anyone except unrestrained religious zeal. This would have been off-putting even if the religions were complex and fleshed-out, which astoundingly they were not at all, despite being the only topic of conversation and conflict for the entire book. There is the "bad, dark, blood" religion and the "good, kind, light" religion, and we really never get much more insight than that.
The world-building is rudimentary. There are 3 main groups of people, but we don't really learn much about their culture, history, traditions, dress, mythology, or really anything about them apart from who worships which religion. In terms of settings, we don't get much description of any of the places. The only thing I can conjure up in my mind after reading is that the main city in the "good" country is composed of concentric rings. There are certainly no evocative or interesting details about any of the settings to set the mood of the world.
The short chapter structure and rapidly shifting POVs also have a wider effect on the book, beyond the lack of connection with the characters, in making the pacing extremely strange. The whole story is told at essentially the same pace, whether the chapter is detailing a kiss between two of the characters, a major plot reveal, or a battle. There is no variation, leading to no peaks and troughs in tension, and the strange sense that the 'real' story has yet to begin, despite being most of the way through the book and multiple major plot points having occurred. All of the reveals fall flat because they are very much told rather than shown. The lack of a real sense of who the characters are also makes it less shocking when they are revealed to be on the 'bad' side, and the lack of any motivation for this switch makes them uninteresting one-dimensional 'baddies', as if in a children's story.
The fast pace and inability to stick with any one POV also means that the romance storylines have absolutely zero development, managing somehow to be both predictable and spring into life from absolutely nowhere. This is another example of the extreme showing rather than telling, and if anything makes the characters even less compelling and believable.
Honestly the only part of this which was actually well-written was the fight scenes. This coming from someone who has never punched someone let alone been in a battle so take with a pinch of salt. But the variety and severity of injuries sustained seemed a bit more realistic than some I have read before.
Finally, I think it is in quite poor taste to leave every plot point/character on a massive cliffhanger at the end of the book. I don't think it is worth my while to finish the series so it feels like I have just ended up wasting my time reading a whole lot of nothing. It's a thumbs down from me. Just goes to show that a lot more goes into writing a good book than an idea and the ability to string sentences together. I feel that the overall impression here is of something at the amateur end of the grimdark fantasy genre, which is missing a lot of necessary editing and restructuring.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Sexual violence
Minor: Sexual content
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