Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

A Whole New World by Liz Braswell

10 reviews

presco's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Torture, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Blood and War

amanda_mh's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

Liz Brazwell took a well known and beloved story and turned it into a much darker story that captured my attention from the first introduction of the world. In this  version she somehow made Jafar more diabolical, and Jasmine more independent and powerful. Really enjoyed this one! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Death, Torture, Toxic relationship, Police brutality, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

readandtellstories's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

1.5

Honestly, I really did not enjoy this book. I enjoyed the first maybe half of it and then it went super downhill for me. The story wasn’t very believable and had too many moments of “oh they were so close, but then something terrible happens again.” I never felt like I got any satisfaction for the characters and their plight and by the end, I really didn’t care anymore. I also really wanted them to kind of circle back and parallel to the original story with Jafar’s last wish and the ending really left me wanting so much more. I was actually furious when I finished this book, so unfortunately it’s not high on the rating scale for me.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal cruelty

ninaleeray's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful fast-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? No

5.0

This take on Disney’s Aladdin starts off familiar and takes a dark turn. Jafar with his  evil magic goes to unimaginable lengths to become all powerful stops at nothing using Iago, genie and death to his advantage. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Violence, Death of parent, and Murder

holiday7's review against another edition

adventurous 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

3.0

I'm not really the biggest fan of Aladdin. But I kind of liked this one. It was pretty good.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Child death, and Blood

Minor: Animal death, Police brutality, and Fire/Fire injury

vixenreader's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional lighthearted mysterious relaxing 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

3.25

The re-telling of “Aladdin” treads a fine line between a replica of the original source and fan-fiction, it is a lot better, and surprisingly more inspired, than it could have been. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, and War

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Gore, Police brutality, Medical content, and Grief

Minor: Animal death, Cursing, Fatphobia, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism

Ultranationalist governments, arranged marriage, starvation, thirst, poverty, theft, and drowning in sand are also featured in the text.

ylienna's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense 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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal cruelty and Child death

Minor: Police brutality

writtenbydnicole's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

stormywolf's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful fast-paced

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

3.0

 Partly inspired by a certain internet movie reviewer, and partly because I am a bit of a fangirl, I decided I wanted to dedicate the month of December to all that is Disney! This series of reviews will focus on Disney-inspired media, obviously, and will hopefully expand over the years. This year I wanted to get the ball rolling on their Twisted Tales series, books that promise to re-imagine the Disney stories we know and love as new, darker takes. Will they be successful, or will the originals' magic still hold?

Read my full review at The Wolf's Den

Overall, there was a lot I liked in this story, but the execution was lacking. There are tons of valuable perspectives addressed throughout the story—of women in a patriarchal society, of poverty and morality, of power and justice—but without a central character to witness and react to these revelations and (hopefully) changes, it doesn't leave much of an impact when all's said and done. It is an interesting What If... story, to be sure, but would have greatly benefited from a tighter focus and/or more alterations to main characters. Still, as an introduction to the possibilities of these Twisted Tales, I'm definitely looking forward to what lies ahead, albeit with a bit more apprehension. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child death, Death, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, and Murder

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, and War

journeythroughthechapters's review against another edition

dark 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

Thoughts
This was such a disappointment.

My experience reading this was amazing because I buddy read it with my best friend but we both hated it. Haha.

Things I liked:
- The Setting: I thought the way the atmosphere was described was really good. I felt like I could imagine Agrabah which was cool but not enough for me to enjoy this book.

Think I didn't love
- The Writing: The best way I can describe the writing is that the author just wrote everything she thought and turned it into a book. She used words like "unprincessy", "uppity", "teeny tiny". It was a real struggle to get through. Because the writing felt so clunky.
- The Characters: I think Jasmine was trying to be too much of everything. Morgiana was a cool character but we didn't get that much of her. Aladdin was good. I feel like he was the strongest character and most consistent. But all the other characters were average. It was mainly Jasmine that I didn't like and she took up A LOT of the story.
- The Logic: There were a few things in the end that didn't make sense. A couple of out of character things. People's actions. It was confusing and made no sense.

I wish loved this but I didn't. I'm happy it's done. Onto better reads. Let's hope. 

Representation
POC (main character and side)

Content Warning 
Loss of a parent, Animal Abuse, Decapitation/Body Horror, Death, Violence

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal cruelty