Reviews with content warning for Murder - Crier's War

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

piphux's review

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4.25

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some_random_person_hi's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
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

This book:

-made me so emotional that I screamed out loud at one point and cried during the end of the Acknowledgements

-was a learning experience that I personally should not read something without spoilers

-was a pageturner

-has a very exciting ending

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chrissycrow's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-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? Yes

4.0

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talonsontypewriters's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

2.5

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sinaprst's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

The sapphics won big time on this one, this was all I ever wanted and more.
I literally physically could not put this down (I read the last 300 pages in a day), because it is that good.

The romance was just the perfect slow burn with all of my favorite tropes executed perfectly. Both Crier and Ayla felt so real to me and I fell in love with both of them.

But the story aside the romance was just as great. I loved the way both Crier and Ayla had their own arc and their own secrets and motives that they kept from each other and how both arcs came together in the end.

Also, the writing style was beautiful and the world was believable and nicely crafted.

recommended reading ambience: https://youtu.be/6nRFaOFcbpk?si=hOC2OB-O1xe-7xKH

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kell_xavi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

3.0

Crier’s War introduces a winning concept: a land in which a queen unable to birth a child commissions a girl to be made (the first automa), and soon the upper classes all desire automai, and soon the growing numbers of automai revolt their threatened position as subpar and dangerous to humans, and so there is a war. Years later, in a kingdom run by an automa who has appropriated human customs even as he takes joy in their fearful servitude to him, a teenage girl works toward revenge for her family’s senseless death in the war, and the sovereign’s daughter comes into an understanding that her father’s and her fiancé’s hatred of humans and conspiracies among their own kind are dangerous and worth standing against.

I must admit, none of immersive fantasy, revenge stories, or romance are a draw for me, so I can’t say these elements we’re successful. I do look for unique narratives and ideas though, and Varela has certainly created something I haven’t come across before. I was curious about the automai as a computer/robot analogue or as a live automaton, a doll come to life. They seem, more than anything, given the natural elements they need to live, to be sentient creatures created by magic. Their pillars, though, are created more like AI might be coded. They’re Pinocchio x an algorithm, I guess, meant to be perfect according to some (European Enlightenment) version of the strong, symmetrically beautiful, reasoned man. This idea, taken further with a power dynamic of servitude and control, mastery through abjection and cultural genocide, is a story told many times in history, in many voices and truths. It is also a twist on the clever machine, a story of humans playing god and being killed by their creation. It is a story of the Enlightenment, Modernism, and the Computer Age, distant from any mention of divinity, a battle of gilded things, intellects, and emotions.

It is here that the print gets smudged a bit. Why is this a love story, why does the relationship become what Varela wants to say? The descriptions of Crier and Ayla listening to each other breathing, feeling each other’s warmth, being stung and angry and worried and desperate and hateful of each other, thinking of each other and holding the other’s belongings… were not new. They were sluggish in the story, overwrought and tropish, slowing down the court intrigue, the uncovers of secrets, allies and enemies. The winding and conflicting passions bring the story back to Earth (or wherever they are), away from the brilliance spinning out from all directions. Crier’s jealousy and Ayla’s sense of betrayal, unrelated to their feeling for each other, are similarly sticky, repetitive, sentences to skip past until the plot comes back in.

The events of the plot are great! The threads pull apart and stitch together and fray so many times, and I loved the weaving. There’s folktale in the lines, there’s music and dancing, murder and memory, feathers and stones, apples and ocean, a compass and black dust. The symbolism is wonderful, spinning up a creeping Victorian dread, a liveliness, a rich and storied history to the world we enter. I wanted more. I wanted Ayla and Crier to sink in, rather than floating out into each other and away from each other, as though the setting were not a magnificent tale to be told.

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nightshaderoots's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

I liked how complex the plot and characters are. The writing style was something to get used to but I liked the way the author described scenes and the characters. The world building was also something I haven't seen before which I loved learning about. The lore building was also paced well so it doesn't feel like info dumping but it was still enough where I wasn't in the dark.

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frantically's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional 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

4.0

This book dragged a bit at the start of me (and I have to admit — I'm not the biggest sci-fi person) but the last quarter really turned it around for me and I'm probably going to read the next one!

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