Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

A Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir

19 reviews

mj1588's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Torture, Gore, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Body horror, Death of parent, Slavery, War, Violence, Blood, Child death, Death, and Colonisation

erebus53's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.25

I wish I could put my finger on the issues I have with this series. Part of it is that I don't like wars and fighting much, but it's more than that. I really love a lot of the plot points, but I run out of patience waiting for them to happen. I like the characters, but not enough to invest heavily in the plot.
I guess with this one I was hoping that it might have a bit of resolution. Although there are some major reveals that are highly rewarding, it's also obvious as we get to the final parts of the book that we are far from the end of this epic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, War, Domestic abuse, Violence, Torture, and Xenophobia

risten's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, Torture, Gore, Slavery, Genocide, Pregnancy, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Murder, Death, Classism, Medical content, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, and Blood

froukjemelenhorst's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and War

Moderate: Death of parent, Child death, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Rape

theintrovertsbooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, War, Violence, Child death, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Torture, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Medical content, Confinement, Body horror, Grief, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Domestic abuse, and Cursing

Minor: Rape, Sexual violence, Genocide, Slavery, Vomit, Sexual harassment, and Emotional abuse

what_karla_reads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Violence, and Torture

bzliz's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

4.5

Every time I finish one of her books, I am blown away by Sabaa Tahir’s storytelling. She is a master at weaving together seriously intricate plots all involving different complex characters with varying degrees of overlap. Her twists don’t feel cheap and many truly caught me by surprise. A warning: this series has seriously intense world building and at times it can be a struggle to keep up with names and places. 

In this book, Laia is on a quest to stop the Nightbringer and saving those most at risk of destruction along the way. Elias is melding into his role as Soul Catcher, helping Laia when he can but finding it harder and harder to ignore the pull of his duties. Helene is still duty bound to do the Emperor’s bidding and combating the ambitions of Keris Veturia. Every time I think I’ve seen all the layers of these characters and their motivations, Tahir drops another bomb and I realize she’d been laying hints to it all along. 

The only reason I’m not giving this five stars is because the complexity of the story makes my dumb brain work too hard to try to keep straight characters and places since we’re bouncing around so much. 

Content warnings:
Most are self explanatory and make sense if you’ve already read the previous two books. 
Pregnancy (on page):

The Empress Livia becomes pregnant after marrying Marcus. She is an even bigger target for assassination while carrying the heir and Keri’s Veturia manages to poison her. She survives and goes on to successfully deliver the baby (on page) but there are some complications and Helene must use her healing power to keep her sister alive.

Domestic abuse (on & off page):

Marcus really sucks and constantly abuses Livia even as she is pregnant. He does this to keep Helene compliant with his orders.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Death, Pregnancy, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and War

Moderate: Slavery

moserstopheles's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-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? Yes

5.0

love love love

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, War, Slavery, Violence, Rape, Sexual violence, and Torture

madamenovelist's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Vomit, Torture, Racism, Grief, Genocide, Kidnapping, Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Misogyny, Medical trauma, War, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Death of parent, Death, Physical abuse, Body horror, Classism, Blood, Xenophobia, Sexual violence, Murder, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual harassment, Sexism, Rape, Violence, Domestic abuse, Cursing, and Confinement

rinku's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.5

 Because of some small critiques here and there, I gave A Reaper at the Gates 4.5 stars and not full five stars. Still, it’s an amazing book with an interesting plot and great characters. 

We again follow Elias, Laia and Helene in this book. Elias became the soul catcher and now has to balance this new hard task with his want to protect Laia. Laia herself tries to find allies in the battle against the empire and especially Keris. I was again most interested in Helene’s story who has to stop Keris from taking over the empire but also protect her sister from Marcus; Livia’s need for protection increases in the course of the story since

she becomes pregnant with the new imperator

. 

This book was a bit slower than its predecessor, even with the constant time pressure, because Laia’s and Elias’ plot felt a bit aimless at some points. I had also had two other small problems with the story: Firstly, it was a bit hard to keep track of the different nations/tribes and their interests introduced here. Secondly, some aspects of the story were not clearly enough explained, like

the reason why Elias suddenly was able to control the magic

. 

The ending of this book though shows how amazingly the series was plotted from the beginning. We get to know that

the cook is Laia’s mom and that she was forced to kill her daughter and her husband which was such a dramatic reveal

. Then, all three characters are at the same place since

the capital of the empire is attacked: Helene is defending the city, Laia is trying to get the ring from her, and Elias wants to collect the escaped ghosts. The way Laia gets Helene’s ring was so creative, but the ring is sadly fake. It’s so disturbing as well how Keris perfectly planned everything and how she was able to kill Marcus

. The most powerful moment of the story though was when

Laia left her mother behind to save Helene; this moment gave me goosebumps

. 

I still like most of the cast since many of them have so much depth. Helene became maybe one of my favorite characters of all time. At the beginning, it was so sad how heartless she became because of all the terrible things happening to her but it’s only understandable, just like her hatred towards Laia. But also, she became so strong which can be seen especially when

she survived the attempted assassination

. I ship her so much with Harper, but I somehow doubt that they’ll get a happy ending together. What I appreciate as well is the fact that romance is not the focus of the story. 

After the ending of A Reaper at the Gates, I can’t wait to find out how this series will end and how our characters will be able to win against the demons of the outside world – and the ones inside of them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Domestic abuse, War, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Sexual content, and Slavery