Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Do błyskawicy podobne by Ada Palmer

4 reviews

elltea11's review against another edition

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challenging funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective 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

4.5

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batesbarb's review against another edition

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I don’t think I’ve hated a book more than this in a LONG time. Our exclusive point of view character is a racist, misogynistic, homophobic asshole who fancies himself a great philosopher. I don’t like Jordan Peterson in real life, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend my fictional time with his 25th century version either. The world building in this story reads like a collection of Fox News scare stories strung together into a novel. They’ll outlaw religion! They’ll outlaw being cisgender (or even using gendered pronouns)! Globalization has hit a point where nations are basically irrelevant and everyone sorts into philosophical/identity affinity groups (which all just happen to be named in English except one that’s named in Japanese, and is a brand/family name, rather than having any philosophical identity). The world is completely intertwined, except that characters all have racial backgrounds that are perfectly apparent to our narrator in some of the most disgustingly racist and fetishistic descriptions I’ve read in years. Sections of the society are heavily invested in philosophy, yet somehow no philosophical or religious traditions other than “Western Civilization” exist in any relevant way (other than one off handed mention of reincarnation). 

It’s such a profoundly shallow and colonialist concept of what the future of earth would look like, I just couldn’t take any more and noped out at 23%. 
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saepsi's review against another edition

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

4.0

  • the scifi aspect is mostly window dressing, which was disappointing since I picked it up because I was in the mood for scifi. honestly only started working for me once I stopped thinking of it as future-speculative fiction and moved it into the realm of pure fantasy in my mind, especially since
    magic and maybe god? are real in this setting while they obviously aren’t in real life.
  •  it was extremely gripping as a political thriller in the first half, a real page turner once you get used to the narrator’s… idiosyncrasies. unreliable narration enjoyers will have a field day with them and their extremely twisted view of just about everything. the plot starts to slow down later on and get into the philosophical elements more - most of which I disagreed with, but to its credit the book never presents any of the political systems or philosophies in it as correct or incorrect, it simply leaves them there for you to judge as you will. 
  • clear attempts were made to differentiate the chapters “written” by characters besides the main narrator, but it’s obvious that the author is most comfortable writing in a certain rather pretentious style and that comes through occasionally  in places where it shouldn’t.
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zmiya's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative 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

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