Reviews with content warning for Violence - 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee

12 reviews

hannah2896's review against another edition

Not something I'd usually read but picked up as longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. The first chapter gave me false confidence in loving this book and didn't set me up well for the absolute brutality of the following chapters. Disturbing and not a particuarly enjoyable read - I wish I read reviews before picking up as I would have avoided. The chapters also seem quite disjointed which left me confused in parts. Dnf at page 77.

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anditsreal's review

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challenging emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Beautifully heart wrenching. Confusing at times, as I understand the chapters used to exist as separate short stories and you can feel the disjoint. It also didn't need the biographer story as a wrapper.

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hedgehogreads01's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional 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? Yes

4.0

A well done story made of separated chapters (lives). First five used to be separate short stories, but they still worked for me as a part of the novel.
The second half (7th life especially) dragged slightly, but was still engaging enough.
It has several
POVs, and might be an issue for some people. I myself prefer books with 1-2 POVs, no more.
Still, liked it a lot.

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french_cat's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative tense medium-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? No

4.0

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happyknitter2020's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad fast-paced

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

4.5

Read as listed on the Women's Prize 2024.

An absolutely amazing story. Read over 2 days & let my mind follow the complex chapters of her life. Learned about women's experiences during the 2 wars & brings to life the values of the Women's Prize.

I think this would be my winner & will be on my Top 10 books for 2024.

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baileyanabella's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

4.5

Listened to this on audio, the narration was phenomenal! Want to reread it in print because there was a few places where the POV shifts and it got a little confusing despite Cindy Kay doing really good voices for each character. Even so, I really enjoyed this story! It was woven together so beautifully by Lee, I look forward to my reread.
This book covers many, many dark topics, definitely recommend checking out content warnings.

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amy_park's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

3.0

Longlisted for the women's prize for fiction, and to be honest I'm not sure why. I didn't think the overall writing was great let alone excellent. Yes, the themes and story itself was interesting, I think more fiction should be about north and south Korea, but this was out wayed by the disconnect I felt for this book.
A massive part of the disconnect were the stories were singular and jumpy as they wern't in chronological order without the initial foundation and writing style to make the plot and storylines flow, like a novel should . There wasn't any background or build up to the stories, which made the first quarter/half of the novel confusing. I think this would have been fine if foundations were established, but as highlighted in the acknowledgements the author created the majority of the "lives" as stand alone short stories, which you could really tell when reading the book. This book shouldn't be marketed as a novel because of this, with the start and end chapters being the "obituarist" narration I felt this book was trying to be something it wasn't. Definetly dissapointed and wouldn't recommend.

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