Reviews with content warning for Blood - Steelstriker

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Steelstriker by Marie Lu

22 reviews

ctriinnn's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring 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: Complicated

Content Warnings

anniesbooknook's review against another edition

5.0

emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

elle_bright's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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: No

Content Warnings

janiceinwonderland's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

while i didn’t agree with it at first, i came to enjoy the split narrative between talin and red. i think red needed a little more personality, but it was novel to get things from his perspective.

plus, the pacing toward their storylines converging was done well enough for me

the pacing toward the ending and the ending itself was also satisfying.

it’s nice to actually get to keep your core characters alive in the end and i loved that talin told her colonizers that it wasn’t her job to undo their harmful actions. queen behavior right there

Content Warnings

anni_shall's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging 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

This book broke me. I expected it to be defeat and reconstruction since it's a sequel, but they don't even dismantle the Palace till the last 50 pages. Talin is forced to serve the Premier because he has control over whether her mother lives, dies, or suffers based on how Talin behaves. The way this is written you can understand how the characters feel with ease. Throughout the whole book, I was tense with anticipation. In the end, I genuinely had no idea if they were going to live or die. I sobbed for an hour for this book. I love it so much.

Content Warnings

guessgreenleaf's review against another edition

4.5

dark inspiring tense 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: Yes

Content Warnings

annaparente's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark hopeful fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I feel the need to preface this review with two notes:

It’s been over a year since I read Skyhunter. I had read it when it came out, then waited for this book, then took forever to actually read it.
Skyhunter took me a while to get through. While it was good, it wasn’t great, and though I had a feeling this book would be the same way, I read it anyway.

So. The review. I just feel like nothing really happened. I finished this book yesterday, and beyond the ending a couple key moments in the beginning/middle, I really couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in this book. It was entertaining, but that was really it. It didn’t have any impact on me beyond that.

Pacing was quick, but the book took me a while to read. Maybe there wasn’t enough action? Or maybe the pacing, though quick, was irrelevant. Most of the time, the book wasn’t compelling enough to hold me in.

Plot twists were just okay. I guessed most of them. I don’t know if I’m aging out of YA a little, or if it’s because this is Marie Lu. Since discovering (and loving) Legend in middle school, I’ve read all of her books except for the Batman thing. They’re great, and she is definitely the master at futuristic YA sci-fi, but I feel like the same formula is followed in every book. How is the Skyhunter duology any different from Warcross or Legend or even the more fantastical Young Elites?

Characters just felt kind of weak. Maybe it was because it had been so long since I read the first book, but Constantine seemed so shallow. What was his motivation beyond “Infinite Destiny”? What exactly happened in his past that made him so horrible? He was (and I mean this very politely, because I still have great respect for Marie Lu as an author) a rip-off of Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender.

The ending was too clean, in my opinion. Everything was tied off in a neat little bow. I just felt nothing when I finished (and really nothing as I was reading). There were a handful of shocking, jaw-dropping moments (literally), and those were great. Seriously. But in terms of the actual plot, the ending was nothing I haven’t seen before.

Some positive thoughts:

The action scenes were great.
Character relationships were wholesome and endearing.
I absolutely love the focus on Talin’s relationship with her mother, and the fierce loyalty she feels towards her. I feel like sometimes, especially in YA, family isn’t as prominent as it could be.
The writing is, as always, really good. The two main leads had distinct and unique voices.

One last random note: Red’s perspective was weird. He had this thing where he would say ‘you’ in his pov, and be referring to himself. This was fine, and it made sense — but usually when a character is thinking to themselves you see that in italics. There were no italics for these thoughts, which really just made it this strange pseudo-second-person pov inside a chapter that was already in first-person. I don’t know. Italics would have been cleaner.

Overall this book was fine. That’s it. Fine. If you read the first and feel the need to finish out the series, by all means read it. But I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend the series itself. I definitely would have adored it in middle school, but it’s been several years since then, and I’ve read enough that this is just nothing special. It’s not bad, just okay.

Content Warnings

artmuseam's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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: Complicated

wiping some tears as i write this review. what an incredible, tense journey that went from sheer devastation and loss to newfound hope. this was the perfect conclusion to the skyhunter duo series and i enjoyed every single moment of this! lu perfectly captured the experience of being torn between protecting your friends vs your family and beautifully displayed what it means to fight for freedom that we take so much for granted. i’ve always been such a big fan of lu’s works and they never fail to leave me breathless, inspired, and wanting more in the end. definitely recommend <3

Content Warnings

robin_leeann's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring sad 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

Content Warnings

erinaraa's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I was a little wary of this duology at first, due to its uncanny similarities to Attack on Titan. (I enjoy Attack on Titan very much, but all the same.) Thankfully, the books both grew on me and the dynamic between each of the characters is so special.

Content Warnings

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