Reviews tagging 'War'

You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo

7 reviews

sarah984's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

2.0

I feel like there's a sort of tone you expect from a novel titled "You Sexy Thing" in a series titled "Disco Space Opera" that has a GBBO comp on the cover, and this book does not have that tone. It is extremely dark and graphic, as well as staggeringly cruel to one of the characters for seemingly no reason. Most of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts (the Firefly references are a mile a minute) and traits seem to spring up as required by the narrative. Most of the characters have no initiative at all and are simply shunted here and there by the plot. It's only getting 2 stars because I thought the cooking stuff was fun and the ship at least had a personality.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture

Moderate: Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Violence, Death, Grief, and Slavery

Minor: Sexual content and War

adancewithbooks's review

adventurous medium-paced

2.25

 

With a title as You Sexy Thing, this book was bound to get a lot of attention. I was interested as well but it took me a while to get to it. I'm not sure I should have. 

With the title and knowing this is about old soldiers getting roped back into something, my curiousity was quite taken. We meet Niko and her crew as they are setting up their restaurant for an exciting night. They were only able to leave the service of the Hive Mind as soldiers if they could show that they were artists. In this case they went for cooking as an art. So they had to start a restaurant. This night was exciting because a food critic would be visiting. They needed to do well. Unfortunately a person gets shipped to them in a crate and the station explodes. Oops. 

It had a lot of potential in ideas but a lot of it fell flat because of the writing. It felt like it was trying an omniscient point of view but it was still too far in characters head for that, which was mostly Nio. It created a very far removed feel from the characters. Not true omniscient but also not a deep enogh focus. I didn't feel like I was truly getting to know them. We'd be in this scene with this character and then the next paragraph we would be in another scene with another character. 

We got a tiny bit of this and a tiny bit of that. But never did we go in depth into a character. The death of a character and the betrayal of a character were barely dealt with. So nothing that happened got much of an emotional reaction from me as a reader. 

Which is a shame because there are a lot of great ideas here. Many different alien races, the hive mind sounds like an interesting concept and a potential enemy. The bio ships like You Sexy Thing that they traveled on, created an extra dimension to their interactions. But a lot of the rest needed a lot of work. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Death, and Murder

Minor: War

mossgoblins's review

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death, Murder, and Torture

Moderate: Cursing, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, War, Body horror, and Gun violence

cakemeister's review

adventurous funny medium-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Torture, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Physical abuse

Minor: Genocide, War, Colonisation, Slavery, and Cursing

motaki's review

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

There were parts that I liked and others that I was 'so uhm, what now'
The plot and the pace were all over the place, sometimes quirky and light while turning extremely heavy and dark the next minute, let me tell you I had whiplash! 
For a character driven book we get too many POV switches in the same paragraph, sometimes you had to reread a sentence to get who uttered that. 
There is a lot just hinted at but we needed a more solid plot for this book, even if the author planned to have a sequel, they should have at least tidied up some questions left unanswered, this one felt more like a 300 pages of messy preview. 
Niko is a good captain and a nice character, she deserved a better story than this useless moping and pining after a toxic ex. 
Hope they'll do both her and her ragtag crew justice in the next instalment. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Slavery, Torture, War, and Physical abuse

uranaishi's review

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Moderate: Cursing, Abandonment, Death, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Alcohol, Classism, Domestic abuse, and War

ladythana's review against another edition

adventurous 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Torture, and Confinement

Moderate: Gaslighting, Murder, Blood, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Physical abuse, and Slavery

Minor: War