Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

5 reviews

cleot's review

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Death, Gaslighting, Confinement, Animal cruelty, and Police brutality

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, War, Antisemitism, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Violence, and Animal death

Minor: Sexual violence, Ableism, Genocide, and Misogyny

gulag, soviet repression, femicide, human experimentation, nazism, Josef mengele, radiation, surveillance state, child experimentation, willful exposure of civilian population to lethal circumstances

bel017's review

adventurous challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

Too horrifying for me (though I finished it), should have checked the content warnings first.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Violence, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Death, Torture, Grief, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, War, Police brutality, Murder, Medical trauma, Terminal illness, Physical abuse, Homophobia, and Genocide

spacebornfew's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

On one hand, this book gave me exactly what I wanted, it follows a formula that just makes something in my heart clench. It was, as always with Natahsa Pulley novels, hauntingly beautiful, tragic and tender. With bonus octopus.  

However it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore how poorly her female characters are treated. You can't help but feel that they are plot devices purely there to move things along for the leading men. Considering the book explores sexism and gender, at some points in quite a heavy handed manner, it feels incredibly jarring to still not have women exist to have some purpose beyond window dressing. 

It's also very dark, at points a lot darker than her other novels which I had not entirely expected. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Cancer, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Animal death, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Torture, Animal cruelty, Genocide, Homophobia, Police brutality, Rape, Terminal illness, Miscarriage, and Physical abuse

Minor: Antisemitism, Panic attacks/disorders, War, and Xenophobia

tamamorii's review

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia and Cancer

Moderate: Antisemitism and Genocide

Minor: Animal death

ginger2d's review

emotional 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? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deportation, Terminal illness, and Sexism

Moderate: Violence

Minor: Rape, Panic attacks/disorders, Antisemitism, Torture, War, Transphobia, Genocide, and Forced institutionalization