Reviews with content warning for Violence - These Burning Stars

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs

17 reviews

wsteen's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

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eldane's review

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adventurous 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

5.0

This is exactly the space opera I was needing. This was a beautiful, powerful, and emotional book with some of the best-written characters I have ever seen. It takes immense skill to write bloodthirsty, cruel, murderers as your protagonists, but Bethany Jacobs does it well. The worldbuilding is incredible and detailed, and the plot is tightly woven and well-paced. I also loved the voice and writing style, and the descriptions were out of the world (ha). And the twist at the end? WOW. I was not expecting it at all. This has established itself as one of my favorite books of all time.

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heretickal's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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avacadosocks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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wandering_not_lost's review

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4.0

Not a perfect book, but a solid 4 stars. This was a book that mostly turned on the characterization, and that was done well. I have a low tolerance for Esek's brand of "hi, I'm a sociopath and I ruin everything I touch, but hey, I'm so CHARMING and SKILLED (oh, and RICH) that I get away with everything!" character, so honestly though she hooked me in right at the beginning, I began to wonder what the author would do with her. Was this going to be a tragic balancing of the scales, or was she going to be an anti-hero that we were supposed to like despite her many, horrible flaws? In the end, to be unspoilery I'll say that I felt her arc was wrapped up in a satisfying way.

The other characters and character arcs were, frankly, less interesting, and also less well-drawn. They just couldn't compare, but also they just didn't have a lot of spark to them because we didn't see too much of them except in how they revolved around Esek's and Six's little drama. Jun's and Liis' coupledom was fine, but we hadn't SEEN them fall in love, so it felt a bit flat. Chono was a good foil for Esek's flamboyance, but I never really felt I had a good hold on her - she seemed like she should never have fallen into Esek's orbit, should never have enabled her through all the things she did, but yet, there she was, becoming a terrible enabler. Still, it was very nice to see a book that puts its money where its mouth is with a gender-neutral society - there are characters where all you know is what gender they are now, not what sex they were born as.

The general worldbuilding was interesting, but in the end I couldn't help but feel like I never hand a handle on it. How exactly does casting work (I figured it was just hacking, but in the end the way the author describes something Jun does broke me out of that

why would the Hood program get "thinner" and threaten to "tear" the more it was copied to the ships? It's just a program, right?

)? And for all the politics of the Treble and the various factions of Hands that we were served throughout the book, in the end it all felt a little bait and switchy, where the hugely powerful bureaucracy conveniently faded into the background. And for all it was nice to see an ending that wasn't all doom and gloom, it still all just felt a little too pat.

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