Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

The Black Coast by Mike Brooks

5 reviews

mazzeroo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious 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? Yes

4.5

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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oliverlang's review against another edition

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adventurous 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? Yes

5.0

I loved it! Immaculate world building. The nuances of cultural differences and language was spectacular. Everything from the description of the sky to being within the throws of battle was well written, descriptive and gripping. I'm really looking forward to reading the second and third books.

"It was a murky morning. The sun had probably just about hauled itself over the horizon behind the clouds that rolled in overnight, but at the moment was doing about as much work as the rest of Black Keep "
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linguisticali's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

For the most part I really enjoyed this, despite its flaws. It was ambitious and I really wish it had been less so. Too many threads and too many POV characters for it to be coherent and satisfying, and there were a lot of scenes that could have been cut short or cut entirely. The language, gender and society stuff was interesting, but fantasy homophobia will never not be tedious. Memorable enough for 3.5 stars but I won't rush to pick up the sequel. 
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sarah984's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful 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 is the beginning of an epic fantasy series, but the "epic" portions were my least favourite parts. I am not invested at all in the squabbles over which of the three God-King candidates is legitimate, or the weird demon politics across the sea. However, the book shines in more slice-of-life sections where people from two disparate cultures need to learn to live side by side if they want to survive.

I thought the different cultures were well written and felt realistic even though they were also clearly designed to have rough edges that would catch on one another. The homophobia from one of the POV characters was a little much for me personally though. It's challenged in the text but it's really violent and the narrative kind of excuses it which annoyed me.

I can see a few obvious plot setups for the sequel that made me groan (there is one subplot in particular that requires a major character to be really careless about something extremely important in a way that seems contrived and uncharacteristic that will really bug me if it's a major feature in the sequel) but overall it left me feeling glad I read it.
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