Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker

21 reviews

crybabybea's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

1.0

This book is a great light entertainment romantasy in the same vein as ACOTAR or Fourth Wing. I, however, feel duped because it was being sold as a high fantasy with romance and incredible world-building. If you love love love fleshed out fantasy, political strife, and detailed magic systems, you probably will not like this book. It falls apart once you look at it too closely. Fun for what it is but I have to rate it low because it's not what I look for in a fantasy. If I were rating this just solely as a romantasy I still wouldn't rate it very high. I felt ACOTAR was even written better than this which is a very low bar.

 I wrote a 3,000 word essay for how much this disappointed me, so here are the bullet points: 

• Shallow world-building. There are cool, unique things that happen but they serve no purpose for the world (such as the dragons turning into moons). 
  • World building is lazy and the author relies on you reading a 20 page glossary to understand rather than fleshing out the world herself
• Dragons are part of the world but don't serve any purpose beyond transportation.
• No political strife, except for the FMC telling you how awful the king in her region is, despite having a crazy cool premise with a dragon mythology-based elemental magic system whose users are denoted by their colorful beaded earrings.
• Nothing happens in the plot except the very slow burn romance which doesn't pay off at the end
• Magic doesn't really serve any purpose except to sound cool
• The conlang is messy and doesn't work well
• The writing itself is clunky, full of heavyhanded metaphors that don't land
  • Writing repeats itself multiple times with the same cadence and word usage
• Characters with no real personality beyond the tropes they represent, could be replaced with any other romantasy main characters and it would make no difference
• Poor LGBTQIA+ representation (despite it being praised in multiple reviews)
• Because of all these issues, the book is 250 pages longer than it needs to be.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Rape, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Stalking, and Torture

taobooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The romance plot got very competitive and the story slowed down too much in the middle for this to get 5 stars.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Animal cruelty, Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Body horror, and Death of parent

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Confinement, and Domestic abuse

manaledi's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book really sucked me in for many hundreds of pages and I wish the next one was out already. A slow start and some very slow world building but the characters are strong and the tension is well done. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Sexual content, Blood, Violence, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Confinement, Torture, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, and Murder

Moderate: Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Panic attacks/disorders, Kidnapping, Animal cruelty, War, and Stalking

heyheyhailey1's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

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

3.75

Though the book starts out with *A LOT* of world-building, these complex pieces fall into place to create a really beautiful, new world. The magic system, creatures and realms of the Burn, the Fade and the Shade make for a really intriguing and creative backdrop for this character-driven story. I think there are a lot of different parts of this world to explore throughout the series. 

I enjoyed the character growth and occasional other POVs to break up the story. Personally, I am always down for a badass FMC with emotional baggage. My only gripe with this book is an overuse of the “forgotten past” trope. I definitely got lost a few times trying to keep up with what I was supposed to understand already vs. was supposed pick up as I go. You don’t end the book knowing how everything fits together exactly. I found it annoying that Raeve seems to know things that the reader doesn’t get any insight into which is frustrating and strange in a first person POV. 

SPOILERS !

I understand how Raeve needed to evolve through her grief to remember her past. I think the character has legitimate reasons to push things away rather than reckon with them, and generally enjoyed piecing her identity back together as she learned to be more vulnerable. HOWEVER I do not understand how one character has THREE separate histories that the reader knows nothing about. I am leaving book 1 with more questions than answers. Who the hell is Fallon? What is the Other and where did it come from? I am going to have to google if we found out what her dragonflame healing was from because I don’t know if I missed it or if this also a secret at this point in the story?

I will definitely read book 2 when it comes out, excited to discover more pieces to the puzzle about Raeve’s past and their implications on her future. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Vomit, Blood, Death, Violence, and Gore

Moderate: Misogyny and Animal cruelty

Minor: Suicide attempt and Suicidal thoughts

wannabe_lee's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Murder, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Torture, War, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Violence, Animal death, Gaslighting, and Physical abuse

Minor: Animal cruelty

doahdancer's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Torture, Grief, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Vomit, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, Animal death, and Murder

Moderate: Pregnancy, Cursing, Domestic abuse, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Rape and Cannibalism

sampisters's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Torture, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Death of parent, Confinement, Pregnancy, and Excrement

Minor: Rape

zreadsstories's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

4.75

Would say this is ALMOST 5 stars it was so good everything I want and need from a good romantasy read. I’m only not giving it 5 stars because it is book one I’m a series and I have to leave room for growth obviously. Read this it is absolutely worth the hype!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Violence, and Torture

Moderate: Sexual content

Minor: Death of parent and Confinement

dani_reis's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Death, Pregnancy, Kidnapping, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Confinement, Grief, Blood, Slavery, Torture, Child death, Gaslighting, Sexual content, Domestic abuse, and Mental illness

Minor: Infidelity

Animal death

mystical, die and turn into moons. Torture of mystical animals.

alexijai98's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I had high expectations so I’m honestly a bit disappointed. i really enjoyed the first third or so, but after that I felt like I was just desperately trying to be done with this book. 

I found Raeve grating and incredibly predictable after a while, and almost more like a YA character than an adult. She’s incredibly one dimensional - all she does is wallow in misery. There’s only so much suffering a woe I can take! 

Also, this book could’ve done without maybe 200ish pages, and the decision to have multiple POVs in the last fourth or so was simply distracting. I skimmed chapters with POVs I didn’t care about lol.

The whole middle section where Raeve finds herself among the warriors and Kaan has to fight to save her? Waste of time and the brain power it took to read about it.

 

And the use of “male/female” got really old really fast, and just felt weird throughout. Is the author doing weird gender politics or is it meant to remind readers about the “old-fashioned-ness” of the world?

Despite my overall disappointment I will attempt to read the rest of this series when more books come out. I’ll just keep my expectations lower.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Torture, Confinement, Death, Gore, Grief, Misogyny, Sexual content, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual violence