Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis

6 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

loochysue's review

adventurous emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Car accident, Death, and Blood

Minor: Vomit, Emotional abuse, and Excrement

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like a lot more could have been done with the fact that Ampersand’s knowledge of Earth culture was hundreds of years out of date.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

momo916's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I found the alien backstories a little convoluted and hard to follow at times, but that was likely in part due to the fact that I listened on audiobook rather than reading it as a book. There were some scenes that felt like they had been added in to create a poignant moment rather than resulting from the natural progression of events. I found myself pulled out of the story at times by the quality of the prose, and there are a few phrases that are overused – the first that comes to mind being "at length." There were some open questions that never got answered, e.g.

why the Fremdans stayed at the bunker so long, why the Fremdans tunneled through the mountain to escape instead of using their disc things, when/how exactly the fusion bonding between Cora and Ampersand occurred

. There are probably a few more, but those are just the ones off the top of my head after finishing the book.

That being said, I definitely enjoyed the experience of watching the relationship between Cora and Ampersand develop as the story went on. It was a sort of self-insert kind of enjoyment, since the narrator doesn’t really seem to have any particular characteristics. Perhaps this could be attributed to the high-stress nature of most of the events of the plot, but I wouldn’t say this particularly detracts from the experience of reading the book. In a way, it allows you to look past the other flaws of the book and just kind of live in it.

A complaint I have that is particular to the audiobook is that the reader has this habit of exaggerating the inflections she adds to her voice when Cora is surprised/shocked by something (which, given the subject matter of the book, happens often). I got used to it after a while but it was annoying at first. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Genocide, Suicide, and Excrement

Minor: Car accident

stormywolf's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

 Audiobook Read by Abigail Thorn & Stephanie Willis
Unabridged Length: 16 Hours
Listened at 2.25x Speed

Read my full review at The Wolf's Den

Overall, I thought this audio successfully juggled the best of both worlds: utilizing two readers added some uniqueness to things, while the one-reader structure of Cora's story maintained familiarity. As some names and terms were unfamiliar (a common trait in sci-fi), the audio pronunciations were definitely appreciated. Though it took a little time for me to find the cadence, even at more than double speed there's still plenty of Cora's attitude coming through the narration. Seeing that the next book is adding a third reader into the mix, I'm excited to see how things progress and change, and not just in the story! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Kidnapping, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Violence, Abandonment, Car accident, Confinement, Suicide, Cursing, Genocide, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Excrement and Vomit

kaleidoscope_heart's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• 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: Blood, Genocide, and Gore

Moderate: Car accident

Minor: Excrement, Medical content, and Suicide