Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

5 reviews

linatheteafairy's review

adventurous challenging dark hopeful inspiring sad 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Colonisation, and Confinement

Minor: Child death, Classism, and Dysphoria

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death, Gore, and Grief

Moderate: Self harm, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Abandonment, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Confinement

Minor: Sexism, Dysphoria, and Fire/Fire injury

Self-injury for magical purposes. Foot binding. Suicide by drowning. Mutilation/cutting, including in a consensual sexual context.

entomonkey's review

mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Slavery, Blood, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Torture, Murder, Kidnapping, Gore, Death, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, and Confinement

sarah984's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.0

So many of the concepts were cool in theory, but I found this short story collection overall insufferable. The plot structure is very similar to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, in terms of telling an overarching story of international political intrigue through intimate details of seemingly insignificant objects. Unfortunately the reason the characters have for doing this is not well realized or interesting (a character we barely get to know makes a cop character Feel Bad about aer role in a repressive police state -

incidentally the one character the author mentions deliberately designing as a Black character in the afterword is just a vessel for reforming a cop lol

- with a bunch of didactic stories about individuals who feel like characters in a fable rather than real people who could have ever existed). There is one story told through letters and official documents that I thought was good but all the other ones had at least one huge glaring issue that annoyed me (eg. the foot binding story does that 'everyone suffers this but me' thing I hate in historical narratives, and the absolutely unbelievable character decision that drives the plot in the mermaid story). This could have been so good, but to me it wasn't.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Body horror, Death, Colonisation, Toxic relationship, Grief, Drug use, Confinement, Mental illness, and Suicide

krystalg's review

emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Abandonment, Suicide attempt, Confinement, Death, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide