Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed

4 reviews

crossbun's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional reflective 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

I loved this book so much. It's just experimental enough to keep me interested without distracting from the excellent pacing and characterization. I felt so immersed the worldbuilding from human society to the natural environment. Mohamed has an eye for detail and tight, carefully crafted descriptions that pack a punch and tell you so much. The weather and bird motifs were well done throughout: begging Reid for movement, for finding a way forward. 

Take a look at the content warnings but as someone who's sensitive to a lot of the things on this list, it was all handled with respect and care and didn't feel gratuitous or out of place.

Loved the ending:
I am a bike lover and yelled in delight when her community came through and gave her one. It was such a surprise to see a bike come back after just an offhand mention of bikes being like treasure earlier in the book. It just made me so happy to see bikes as so meaningful in the apocalypse!! 

I really thought the book was going to be about her journey and not what it took for her to leave (like a typical adventure story) and it was such a delightful surprise to see that her story was about the choice to take the journey and not the journey its self. It's a story I needed.


I would love a follow up to this, I adored it. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

tremayna's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

mapscitiesandsongs's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I am once again left unsatisfied by a novella.  It felt more like the first part of a new dystopian series. Great ideas, but it could have been so much better if the author hadn't decided to tackle so many different topics at once. I would be interested in a continuation though since we never got see the actual 'university' in the end. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

hmatt's review

Go to review page

dark mysterious reflective 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

4.5

I expected to really like this, and it didn't disappoint. 

  • Canadian setting that is foolproof (i.e. I can look up locations on Google Maps and they're exactly as described. This is one of my favourite things to do in nonfiction and it was such a delight and added so much credibility to this fictional narrative.)
  • Really rich world-building that doesn't feel like its being over-explained
  • Nothing happens. Like, things do happen, but the story is mostly about this kind of liminal time in the protagonist's life. It's a very tense, unsure time, and I loved how we were just getting a little glimpse of a bigger world.
  • SHORT, ohmygod, I love a short book where nothing happens. 2022 is the year of short stories and novellas for me. This was great to tote around on a couple weekends away where I wanted to travel light, and it's helping me combat a 2-month-long reading slump.
  • So many little (but painful) quotable passages, which I will now insert some examples of:

For generations we have waited for it to become normal. And it has not. We are still horrified.

It was not instantaneous, the "end of the world," the way it is in nightmares. The sky didn't tear open around an asteroid, the earth didn't swallow us up. And of course, the world did not end at the same time for everyone. No one back then would have been able to say: This is the day our world ended. Or even: This is the year.

On a human scale it was slow enough that for a long time it did not seem truly dire; on a geological scale it seemed that nothing was happening; till suddenly the feedback cycles tipped over, became too front-heavy to regulate themselves.

I wonder what they do in the domes if they catch someone like this. Or do things like this simply not happen there? No, they must have a system. People are people wherever you go; and they aren't any better than us.

I'm an infrequent Readerly user, but sometimes you just gotta do "book maths", so here's my gist: https://www.readerly.com/gists/4079816 - and here's the maths bit:
  • Take the eeriness of the unknown phenomena in Annihilation
  • Add the teen-girl body horror of Wilder Girls
  • Set it in Canada(ish, lol) and in an established post-apocalyptic society like in Station Eleven
  • Throw in a mysterious "other place" that the protagonist is drawn to - same vibes as The Giver
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...