Reviews with content warning for Violence - Don't Fear The Reaper

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Don't Fear The Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

73 reviews

nicolewhopickedthisbook's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Now I love me some Stephen Graham Jones but this book was a little too convoluted, especially getting to end with the reveals (plural).

Why do we need two murderers? Why does Jade keep switching her name?

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averagesparrow's review against another edition

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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

4.0

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perthalus's review against another edition

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dark tense 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? No

The writer tries way to hard to make his main character an iconic badass horror protagonist to the point where it becomes eye-rolling. Instead of focusing on character dynamics and relationships you just get mostly pointless snapshots of random character’s lives before they die a few pages after.

The antagonist somehow also feels incredibly undercooked despite the book being 500 pages long, and the prose is so confusing at times that I honestly can’t tell what is where and how something is happening. You think you’re in one place and then bam you’re on the opposite side of where you thought you were.

Made me miss the first book, which wasn’t too great in the first place.

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jayjm94's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

As perfect a book as I’ve ever read. It had everything: horror references, incredibly adept women, strange teenagers, a small town on the water, a snowstorm, and some light supernatural content. an absolute gem by SGJ, almost certainly my best book of the year (close 2nd being my heart is a chainsaw) cannot wait for the 3rd!

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zosiablue's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring 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

4.25

Man, marry me, Stephen Graham Jones. He's just the best. Like all his stories, this one has full heart and gorgeous writing and campiness and tragedy and action and total respect for the genre. He's the only my writer I know who can do textual jumpscares. This is true horror but it's exhilarating because it follows slasher-horror rules until it doesn't and the rule breaks are totally earned. Can't wait for the next one.

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sofipitch's review against another edition

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dark slow-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

3.5

I'm so disappointed to say this one was just meh. Because I ADORED My Heart is a Chainsaw. The best part of Chainsaw to me is Jade's perspective, it scratched a very specific itch for me, the unreliable narrator, obsessive focus on what the character loves, disregarding a lot else, the way in her essays it Mr. Homes it feels like she is lecturing at you, telling you about slashers with an infectious enthusiasm (I love horror but slashers really aren't my thing). Also Chainsaw all came together at the end in a very perfect way. Which all that is what Reaper was missing. The multiple POVs didn't add much, in fact to me it felt like it lessened my emotional investment, rather than heightening it. There were too many ppl to keep track of, I didn't reread Chainsaw which was maybe a mistake. I'm not the best at remembering names and some of the characters Reaper brought to the forefront I couldn't remember from book 1, and then they still failed to make an impact. I didn't count but we had at least ten POVs which for a 450 page book is too many. Also the "it all comes together at the end" didn't feel as strong or emotionally impactful in this book. Dark Mill South as a slasher is actually the kind of slasher that idgaf about, some brick wall who just loves killing. The thing with Cinnamon was also eh, the stag was the only one I really liked and delivered the way I think it was supposed to. So a lot of this is all my opinion, I've tried to make that clear bc like I said I'm not a slasher girl so slasher fans might still love this, but since this is a sequel, I don't think it lived up to the expectations of the first book. The first book still had enough of an impact for me to likely read the third when it comes out.

Second reading review: While having just read Chainsaw helped with the characters the multiple povs still hurts the book, slows momentum, etc. Showing what someone was doing before they are gored is how slasher movies operate but I think SGJ wants to flesh out his characters maybe too much.
Still looking forward to the finale though!

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