Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Girls of Storm and Shadow

"Take that fire of yours and don't let anyone put it out."
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Girls of Storm and Shadow is the sequel to Girls of Paper and Fire. The series follows a human girl, Lei, who is taken from her home to become a Paper Girl to serve the Demon King. At Paper Court, Lei learns of a plot to take on the King's rule and end his destructive reign, especially against the Paper caste.
This was a reread for me, in preparation to finally read the third and final book in the series. The character development isn't the norm, but that makes this all the more unique and worth investing in. The characters make awful choices sometimes, and we watch them go through this war accumulating even more rage and grief and guilt than they started with. The tension in the story is almost palpable, it kept me hooked.
Definitely check the trigger warnings for this series before going in (some to mention: sexual assault, violence/blood/battle scenes, self harm, mentions of sexual activity though not super descriptive).

Content Warnings

colormehaerim's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional 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? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

abipeach23's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional inspiring 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? Yes

4.5

Loved this book

Content Warnings

diifacto's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense 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

Content Warnings

autistic_dragon's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark fast-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

CONTENT WARNING: Extreme violence, rape and subsequent trauma, sexual slavery, self-harm, suicide, alcoholism

This is one of my most grudging five-star reviews ever.

“Why,” you may ask, “…is that? You shouldn’t feel guilted into giving a book more stars than you think it deserves.”

Well, the thing is, the childish—not as in petulant, but rather the optimistic and idealistic—part of me wants the last third of this book to be very different from what it is, but the mature person I am now cannot help but marvel at the ways Ngan tugs at the reader’s heartstrings, and how the numerous twists and turns into moral ambiguity weave so deftly together.Looking back at my

November 2018 review of the first book in the series, I was being overly simplistic as to the future course of the series. While the series remains interesting East Asian-inspired high fantasy with enough anthropomorphic animals to mistake this for a piece of furry fandom fiction, and also even more same-sex romances than the first book, to the point that I’m pretty sure there’s more same-sex sexual tension than opposite-sex, this is very much also a war story. Not one of epic pitched battles for control of the kingdom, but rather the dark political underbelly of war that embodies the (in)famous Carl von Clausewitz quote, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” In this way it is reminiscent of the final* installment of The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, and judging from my skimming of the other reviews, the general consensus as to that book may apply to you as well. This book contains multiple reader gut-punches of increasing intensity, and I was not kidding around when I included violence in the content warning up there. This book is so violent it’s a miracle the publishers were able to market it as YA.

This book takes Book 1’s already dark premise and makes it even darker, and in such an artful way that I can’t help admiring the grim tableau that Natasha Ngan has made for us. Therefore, five stars.

Content Warnings

alexiswiththefreckles's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Definitely a little bit of 'Middle Book Syndrome' in this one, at least for me. However, it still has me wanting to know what happens to the characters and how these conflicts are going to turn out. Wish I would have read it rather than listened to the audiobook, as the narrator caused some of the characters to be annoying to listen to. Overall, love the world Ngan has created and I am biased into loving wlw fantasy!

Content Warnings

kimarab's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

Starts off a little slow but that’s necessary to set up the plot. Very interesting and good plot twists. i love gay people

Content Warnings

More...