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culpeppper's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-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? No
4.5
This was a truly unique book for me. I loved getting to know the setting, the family dynamics, and the community relationships in the beginning as dread slowly seeped in with the cold. I think a lot of authors don't use weather as a storytelling tool enough, and this story confirmed that I really appreciate when it's a core part of the story. I appreciated the main perspective of Evan, a devoted father, loving partner, and loyal community member who still had flaws and a personality beyond his relationships. The antagonist, or at least the physical embodiment of it, was foreboding from the moment it is introduced, and threats to the community as the cold presses in feel real; the stakes and tension rise slowly but the story doesn't drag. Instead, it drops in on important conversations and focuses on narrating plot or character moments for us rather than having us slog through every day on the rez.
While I don't mind Rice's telling and not showing for instances where we’re getting caught up to speed on certain things, sometimes the writing does feel more like it's telling us what the character is feeling rather than showing us what they're doing and having us decide what the character might be feeling. This wasn't so apparent if sentences were longer, but in the bits between dialogue we’re often told how characters react and what emotion that reaction comes from. Another gripe is the kids are basically pieces of furniture with names but I'm more surprised when I find a novel that does kids well. In general, there were a few characters and plot elements that could have been built more— at times, it felt hollow or, in the case of certain characters, unfinished. So if you're looking for a tight, no questions left unanswered this is not that kinda story. Me, I don't mind it enough to care too much.
There were a lot of beautiful moments interspersed between the hard and traumatic ones. The balance is maintained well, and it offers hope to readers when needed. While the pain characters felt was always there, it never felt overly traumatic or too much.
Overall, I really did enjoy reading this and got through it quick, and it was a really interesting premise and execution of this genre of story. I'm looking forward to becoming more familiar with Rice's other work!
While I don't mind Rice's telling and not showing for instances where we’re getting caught up to speed on certain things, sometimes the writing does feel more like it's telling us what the character is feeling rather than showing us what they're doing and having us decide what the character might be feeling. This wasn't so apparent if sentences were longer, but in the bits between dialogue we’re often told how characters react and what emotion that reaction comes from. Another gripe is the kids are basically pieces of furniture with names but I'm more surprised when I find a novel that does kids well. In general, there were a few characters and plot elements that could have been built more— at times, it felt hollow or, in the case of certain characters, unfinished. So if you're looking for a tight, no questions left unanswered this is not that kinda story. Me, I don't mind it enough to care too much.
There were a lot of beautiful moments interspersed between the hard and traumatic ones. The balance is maintained well, and it offers hope to readers when needed. While the pain characters felt was always there, it never felt overly traumatic or too much.
Overall, I really did enjoy reading this and got through it quick, and it was a really interesting premise and execution of this genre of story. I'm looking forward to becoming more familiar with Rice's other work!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Alcohol, Cursing, Animal death, and Death
Moderate: Death of parent, Gore, Racism, Murder, Abandonment, Blood, Colonisation, and Gun violence
Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Suicide, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Chronic illness, Addiction, Cannibalism, Forced institutionalization, and Gaslighting
Other: guns (not specifically always in gun violence way), smoking cigarettes/tobacco, fatally freezing conditions, animal hunting/butchering, institutional racism, starvation, threats of violence, poverty, corpses, intergenerational trauma, suffocation descriptions. Many of the triggers are embedded in the structure of the character's world, or appear in dream sequences. Death of Parent:cepbreed's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
“The world isn’t ending,” she went on. “Our world isn’t ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world.”
Holy shit. I was assigned this book as a part of my Indigenous Pop: Anticolonialism and Genre Fiction class and I never expected to love it so much. The building tension nearly had me shitting bricks. The way this book reads is perfectly timed with the rate at which the Ojibwe are also gaining more knowledge about their predicament. Sure, going into this book I knew it was apocalyptic fiction, but that never took away from the slow build of dread as the winter got colder and the electricity continued to stay shut off. I have an exactly equal amount of love and hate for the fact that the last couple chapters are so vague.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Cannibalism, Death, Animal death, Murder, Abandonment, Grief, Gun violence, and Racism
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Medical content, and Violence
Minor: Suicide, Sexual content, Alcohol, and Alcoholism
talonsontypewriters's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Grief, Gun violence, Murder, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Gore, Body horror, Drug use, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, and Racism
Minor: Child death, Alcoholism, Racial slurs, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Suicide, Sexual content, and War
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