Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis

9 reviews

purplatypus's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Violence

Moderate: Medical content, Xenophobia, Confinement, Kidnapping, Blood, Suicide, Death, Genocide, and Car accident

Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic, Excrement, Addiction, and Slavery

dejahentendu's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

First contact! Conspiracies, government agents, conspiracy theories, warring alien factions - this book has them all in spades. And yet, the story almost seems languid for much of it. This was not a drawback for me. I liked the slow burn for much of the novel, with the reveals coming slowly. The main focus was on how completely disparate life forms and societies would interact. Where would we understand each other,  and where would we be horrified. Quite nicely done. 

The narrator was mostly quite good, but overdid it a few times. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Blood, and Genocide

Minor: Car accident and Vomit

bookishchef's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious reflective tense medium-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia and Car accident

Moderate: Violence, War, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Genocide

Minor: Vomit, Torture, Murder, and Blood

brnineworms's review against another edition

adventurous tense fast-paced

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

4.0

This is YA. That’s not a positive or negative judgement, just an observation. It wasn’t marketed as YA fiction as far as I recall but that is absolutely how it reads – a college-age protagonist who needs to learn a lesson or two about responsibility, an intermittently-relevant family, awkward romance, drama, angst, queer rep, etc. I enjoyed it but I can see I’m not the target audience.

Also,

I feel like a lot more could have been done with the fact that Ampersand’s knowledge of Earth culture was hundreds of years out of date. He could have spoken Middle English, for example. The point was that he thought humans were violent and backwards, owing to the fervent religious fundamentalism and purges he witnessed in the wake of the Black Death. But then that seems kind of unnecessary, because we’d already seen him horrified by humans eating meat – there was no need to invoke medieval atrocities when there are already aspects of modern life which he finds abhorrent.

This may seem nitpicky but it’s superfluous details like this that end up making the book at least a hundred pages longer than it needed to be. Thankfully, the quick pace prevented the story from feeling like a slog.

I’d recommend Axiom’s End to fans of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. It has a similar vibe.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical content, Suicide, Confinement, Self harm, Stalking, and Violence

Moderate: Racism, Death, Antisemitism, Cursing, Drug use, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, and Sexual content

Minor: Torture, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Ableism, Car accident, Colonisation, Grief, Gun violence, Islamophobia, Slavery, Vomit, Murder, War, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Excrement, and Fire/Fire injury

mind control, not having control over one's own body

apersonfromflorida's review

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Blood, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Torture and Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual content and Suicide

valpuri's review

adventurous mysterious reflective fast-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Medical content, Violence, Genocide, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Car accident, Death, Cursing, and Confinement

Minor: Torture and Suicide

bencaroline's review

adventurous emotional mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Car accident, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, and Xenophobia

Minor: Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexism, Stalking, Suicide, and Torture

rachaelbunny's review

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• 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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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Grief, Kidnapping, Suicide, Xenophobia, Violence, and Toxic relationship

v171's review

adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 This first contact story is such a refreshing break away from what I have come to expect from first contact stories. I loved the reimagined modern setting, which I felt lent itself very well to the themes of the book. I have to say, I loved just about every character in the book, and the appropriate characters had well thought out development, but some of the relationships between characters I found to be hit or miss.

While engaging, the pacing of the story was all over the place. It started at breakneck speed, but quickly came to a screeching halt to establish a lot of worldbuilding, only to pick back up again in the final ~70 pages. Speaking of, I greatly enjoyed the worldbuilding, but I wish it were dispersed a bit more homogenously throughout.

I found that my favorite parts of Ellis's storytelling were highlighted the least. The humans' limited understanding of the aliens, the sociopolitical impact of sensitive information wreaking havoc in the United States, the complex hierarchies among the alien species... all of these were fascinating to me, but often took a backseat to character relationships and variable plot movement.

Overall, really liked the story and I'm excited to see what more comes from Ellis. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Xenophobia