Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Шістка воронів by Leigh Bardugo

472 reviews

natyourusual_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional slow-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

2.0

Once you reach the actual heist happening and the first major problem in the Ice Palace, it becomes a fun read. Unfortunately, that takes over 280 pages which is roughly 2/3 of the whole book. I should not have to slog through that much for it to get good. Plus, certain characters got hyper-speed development at the end despite having enough page time to get better slowly. Other characters got so little page time of substance that I barely knew who they were until the end. It just felt a little sloppy imo. All of the characters should have been aged up as well. I hated being reminded that they’re literal children because that did not make any sense for their character arcs/backgrounds and took me out of the story. Explanation of my biggest gripe in the spoiler section (and it has some pretty big spoilers):

Okay so I have one major gripe with this book and it’s the Nina/Matthias romance. He is a former witch hunter and she’s Grisha. The horrendous things we see from him and his ilk throughout the story are absolutely disgusting. He’s essentially former gestapo yet we’re supposed to be rooting for him to get with someone he was going to torture and murder on several occasions. Even after they’re into each other and they see the burnt corpses of her people, he has the audacity to say to her “have you ever considered that you were never meant to exist?” Like, I get that he “grows” and realizes that maybe everything he was taught was propaganda and wrong, but he also pulls the “killing Hitler means you’re as bad as him” argument when he stops Nina from killing his genocidal mentor. I just think a lot of that arc was not good and I hated it. Them being friends and him growing and then helping her stop more of her people being murdered by helping her end (read: kill) the main cause of that violence would have been a better arc. No romance, though, ever. I cannot stand this type of romance. </spoiler

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Grief, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Cursing, and Gun violence

Moderate: Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Abandonment, Slavery, and Ableism

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, and Pandemic/Epidemic

malinxzoe's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Xenophobia, Physical abuse, Gun violence, Murder, Death, and Blood

Moderate: Torture and Slavery

Minor: Vomit and Abandonment

evie_1106's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny mysterious tense fast-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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Slavery, Drug use, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Death and Death of parent

Minor: Torture, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Addiction

lelekochka's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Death, Slavery, Genocide, Gore, Trafficking, Grief, Xenophobia, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Blood, Sexual assault, Genocide, Classism, Drug use, and Physical abuse

Minor: Child abuse, Cannibalism, Addiction, Animal cruelty, and Drug abuse

ghoststations's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-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

4.75

A wild ride from start to finish. Leant a little heavily on the changing points of view to give the reader the element of surprise/suspence towards the end, but was still thoroughly enjoyable though all of those moments. Characters that I loved/loved to hate, worldbuilding that blended nicely into the story. Relationships (friendships, romance, rivalries, etc) that all felt real and were compelling. Can't wait to read the sequel! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, and Gun violence

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, War, Gore, Slavery, Trafficking, Violence, Blood, Child death, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Gore, Sexual assault, Alcohol, and Blood

Casual use of the word "cripple", with the context that the books is written by a disabled author.

sginnaw's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Murder, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Racism, Drug use, and Genocide

Moderate: Sexual violence, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, War, Addiction, and Cursing

Minor: Kidnapping, Panic attacks/disorders, and Vomit

icedlemonade's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

4.5

This book is amazing!! It’s a little hard to understand what’s going on at some points but the plot twists and character development are great!!

I FEEL SO BAD FOR WYLAN HIS DAD IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore and Slavery

Moderate: Death, Ableism, Blood, and Gun violence

Minor: Alcohol

toastyghosty13's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious sad tense 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? Yes

2.0

i think i liked this book a lot more than any of the other books in the grisha universe i’ve read so far. 

i enjoyed this book and the idea of an oceans 11-esque heist. i did find some parts cheesy and also found the swap from enemies to friends/lovers to be a bit lackluster and strange. an example of this is

nina and matthias. during the flashbacks that showed to context for the status of the friendship/relationship, i was rooting for them to get together. however, the beginning of their reunion is clearly framed with them hating each other. matthias goes from hating her to loving her with no real action or event taking place, which seemed odd to me if only a few chapters before he tried to kill her and hated her. the same goes for kaz, it seems like he goes from coworkers/acquaintances with inej to loving her out of nowhere. i’m not against these relationships —in fact i love them — but they did seem to happen randomly to me.

i actually liked reading about these characters too, unlike most of the characters in the shadow and bone series. i am looking forward to the 2nd part of this duology, and if it is good enough will consider reading king of scars, although i did not find myself enamored with the main character of that when he was in shadow and bone. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Blood, and War

Moderate: Slavery, Death, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Drug abuse, Gun violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Torture

sarah_hutchins's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Torture, Slavery, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Drug abuse, Sexual violence, Gun violence, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Addiction, Fire/Fire injury, Animal cruelty, Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Animal death, and Cursing

sandwiiche's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense 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? No

5.0

I NEED TO READ THE NEXT BOOK IMMEDIATELY

*i may also raise the rating to 5 stars if i love the sequel too*

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Death, Torture, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Slavery