Reviews tagging 'Rape'

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang

177 reviews

gracecrandall's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Grief, Suicide, Misogyny, War, Violence, Emotional abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Child abuse, Child death, Blood, Death, and Sexism

Moderate: Rape and Pregnancy

The child abuse/physical abuse is in the context of

a 14-year-old trying to start a conversation about the government that could be perceived as traitorous. His dad backhands him and then orders him to spar, which turns into a beating. His mother is afraid for the boy's life a few times during the match.

hfejvi's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.75

“I protected Setsuko and the children.” Misaki felt her face twist into a snarl of rage. “Five people were here in the house with me when the Ranganese broke down the doors, and all of them are with us now.” Her snarl turned predatory and she felt the need for blood in her teeth. “One of our sons was with you. Just one. And where is he now?”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Misogyny, War, Rape, Torture, Sexual assault, Murder, and Violence

kcweber22's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-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

4.25

It took me foreveeeerrr to really get into this, but by god it blew me away once I did. Definitely would recommend and revisit

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Blood, War, Suicide, Death, Child death, Violence, Miscarriage, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Murder, and Grief

Moderate: Rape

inthebrineydeep's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Child death

Minor: Rape

avidreadr's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

I was so surprised by this book. Even just reading the title, I had expectations that the main character was going to be named Kaigen. Suffice it to say my expectations were flipped upside down in the most satisfying way. This is not your typical fantasy, it’s not your typical war story. It’s a story about family, strength, warriors, about love, about community. I honestly was really impressed with how unique this story was. So glad I read this. 

Knocked off .5 stars because some loose ends were left at the end of the book.

Knowing this is the last of the universe, will we ever find out who manipulated Robin’s blood?! That was a huge thing to call out in the end without any hint to the mystery!! I need to know!! Also, the terms of the world were sometimes a bit too much and took me out of my immersion.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Suicide, Gore, Child death, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Rape and Child abuse

readwithbeth_'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad 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? Yes

5.0

stop what you’re doing right now and pick up this book because you will not regret it. 

now like everyone I’ve seen this book all over BookTok where everyone is saying this is a 5+ star book so I was intrigued but I wasn’t sure that high dark fantasy was for me. 

But after I saw this book on KU and eventually picked it up and began to read, I devoured it! The first 40ish % did take me a little bit to get too, you’re immediately getting this amazing world building between a mother who has a mysterious past she can’t talk about (Misaki Tsusano) and her amazing sword bearer eldest son who is finding out everything the empire has told them about Kaigen’s history isn’t all true (Mamoru Matsuda).

I recommend reading StoryGraph’s description because it perfectly described the Sword of Kaigens synopsis without revealing the spoilers I would accidentally spurt out.

the sword of kaigen has it all, perfectly developed characters, outstanding magical fight scenes, and Wang makes sure you feel ALL the emotions, I mean I was trying reading chapters but just couldn’t put this book down, this book consumes you and I will never stop talking about it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Misogyny, Suicide, War, and Self harm

Moderate: Miscarriage and Rape

therestisstillunwritten16's review against another edition

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Child death, Rape, Suicide, War, Blood, and Death

hypocretin's review against another edition

4.75

If I were over-concerned with objectivity, this would probably be a 4- or 3.5-star book. But love covers a variety of sins (or whatever the fuck it was Peter said), and I simply loved this book.

The front half drags a little. The concept of state propaganda is introduced rather chunkily. Why is it mentioned at the top of chapter 1 that this book takes place on "Planet Duna, 5369 y. s. p.” when these words never come up and are never relevant again? Why are there completely fake units of measurement for time? Is any of this relevant or meaningful to the plot? Does it add anything of value? Not really!

And yet, I cannot bring myself to level these criticisms with vigor. I love this story of a woman falling in love with her family, of reconciling the past. This story of making peace with your imperfect history so that you can love your imperfect present for what it actually is, rather than resent it for what it is not.

I love how much this book has to say about history. About what it means to have history; the history of a place or a people, but also what it means to have a history with someone. There's such a beautiful tension and heartache in how it explores what it means to be swept up in tradition as something beautiful and profound, while also acknowledging the harm of what it is to be stuck in the past, weighed down by cultural or personal baggage that does not serve your best interests.

The past will haunt you, and it will ruin you if you cling to it too hard.

I also really loved and admired the amount of nuance and care that went into some of the passages that explored Misaki's conflict of identity as a woman with grievances about how her own culture treats her as a second class,

"Other girls at Daybreak tended to react with revulsion to the idea of growing up to become a housewife. A deep, restless part of Misaki was relieved to be in a place where her viciousness was an expectation, not a surprise. Another, equally deep part of her felt a need to defend her culture from these outsiders who clearly didn’t understand it."

I just loved Misaki as an unreliable narrator in general. She was an amazing protagonist throughout the story, full to the brim with personality and opinion and anguish and rage. Even when I knew she was in the wrong or being small-minded or uncharitable to the people around her, I always understood where she was coming from and why she felt and reacted the way she did. I spent a lot of this novel disagreeing with her, but I never once stopped rooting for her. I bore her agony with her, felt the fond swell of achievement in her victories.

I loved watching her grow up. I loved watching her lift her eyes for the first time and take in the people around her and realize what she had. I loved watching her fall in love with her family, with her community.

And I loved, too, our other POV character. It's difficult to speak much of him without spoilers to the arc he follows, so I won't linger on it. I will say Mamoru's character took a little while to really get going for me, but watching him make the decisions he did in the contexts that he had to make them filled my heart with love. Just a boy trying his best to do the right thing, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Even when he wasn't sure he knew what exactly the right thing was. Such paralyzing things for a child to be faced with, but he forced himself to move anyway.

And it made all the difference.

What a good kid! I love him!

The last thing I will say of the Sword of Kaigen is that

it really helped me understand religious mourning practices that hinge the concept of the deceased's ability to find peace on how well their loved ones executed their funery rites

.

I am not in the church anymore, but I grew up in a tradition where the destiny of your immortal soul pretty much came down to how well you lived your life under the rules of the faith. I had heard of practices where the family's adherence to funerary rites was the deciding factor, and always sort of thought privately how harsh that seemed. In my own naive mind, it seemed like you could live a perfectly just and good life and a couple of lazy family members could botch your chances at kicking it in the next realm.

Embarrassing though it may sound, this book is genuinely the thing that made me realize these traditions are not really about the deceased.

After Mamoru's death, there's a lot of superstition and anxiety about his spirit being restless, being trapped on earth and at risk of being warped into something tormented and monstrous if his family does not wish him into the next world properly. Misaki's narration treats this possibility as a very real, very visceral concern. It is an anxiety that hangs over a lot of the back half of the story. She interprets every uneasy sound in the night, every nightmare that stirs her surviving children from their sleep, every startling flicker of shadow out of the corner of her eye as indications that Mamoru's spirit has not been allowed to pass on, all because his family isn't performing the correct grieving rituals.

But the reality is that there is no ghost or concrete indication that his spirit is suffering. The ghostly wails in the night are the crying of a newborn in the house over. There's nothing in the text of the book outside of Misaki's interpretation that suggests anything supernatural is taking place. Because the truth is, that isn't the point.

They don't need to mourn Mamoru so that he can find peace in the next world. They need to mourn him so that they can find peace in this one.

That's what I always missed about these funerary practices. They aren't for the dead, they're for the living. They're there to urge you to make peace and find closure as best as you are able in a situation where sorrow can threaten to swallow you whole.

Misaki and Takeru and Hiroshi and Nagasa and Izumo needed to prioritize their grief and mourning for Mamoru because grief is a wound that will kill you if you are not careful in how you tend to it.

I might just be highly sensitive to those themes and ideas,

having both lost someone very close to me before and actively navigating anticipatory grief for multiple people in my own life as I was reading

, but I just think it was handled really beautifully.

So, yeah. Sword of Kaigen. A book not without its flaws, but also a story with a tremendous amount of heart and a lot of intelligent things to say for itself. I really loved it (and I didn't even get into all the fun wacky anime-ass fight scenes!!!!!!!).

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape

It is handled, in my opinion, very respectfully but unflinchingly. The narrative doesn't linger on act itself, but it does stare down the fallout in a way that I think a reader should go in prepared to stomach. I kind of can't believe this book was recommended to me without a content warning.

thenoboshow's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Xenophobia, Child death, Classism, Miscarriage, Rape, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicide, Violence, Alcohol, Blood, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Misogyny, Murder, and War

lucajgrainger's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Sexual violence, Gore, Child death, Violence, Toxic relationship, Torture, Suicide, Sexual assault, Rape, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Emotional abuse, Colonisation, and Blood