Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

319 reviews

kylamayb's review against another edition

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3.0

I think this book was fairly good. 
I think it touched on transphobia decently, however, I think in some ways it touched on it very poorly. 
The way it discussed how if the TERFs succeeded in wiping out every man and trans-woman they would inevitably find reasons to exclude those within their rank from womanhood (like having PCOS) was well done. 
However, making the catalyst for the events of the book and the motivation for the TERFs a virus that attaches itself to people with high levels of testosterone (men and trans-women) doesn’t feel like a great choice…
The author wrote multiple trans-women that turned due to the virus and the lack of proper medication, inadvertently proving part of the TERFs motivation correct. (I am non-binary so please don’t take this as me being transphobic)
While the head TERF does in the end narrate that she has always hated trans-people, that isn’t done for the rest of the TERFs. 
There was some interesting aspects about passing as a trans-person or not and the privilege that those who pass can hold but it was largely written off as “that’s just how she is” when the main character cannot recognize that. 
I think the idea of how if you villainize all men people use it to harm trans-women could have been an interesting idea, however, when you lean so heavily into biology as a driving factor, you lose that ability. 
Aside from my issues with the premise of the book, I rather enjoyed reading it. 
It was fast paced, there was decent interpersonal drama, and there were some fun mystery elements. 
However, the author constantly referenced a big fight between the two main characters, going so far as to refer to it as “the fight” but never telling the reader what it was.
Also, this may just be a me thing but, there was so much sex in this book I was caught off guard by.
All in all, I was a bit underwhelmed by this book based on the blurb but I read it quickly and didn’t hate it. 

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wyckedwynter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective 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? No

5.0

I didn't anticipate how much story and detail would get packed into this tale. Backstories and internal worlds laid bare. Not sure how else to describe, it's 2AM right now and I just felt like I needed to write something because I am going to miss this book. 

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songofsyenite's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad 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

5.0


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scarletranger's review against another edition

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I'll start with the things that made me want to continue to give this book a chance, long after I probably should have stopped. Felker-Martin is great at descriptions. She can paint a vivid, disturbing picture like no other, and her action sequences are top-notch.

However, that doesn't make the writing solid. Even given the unique genre, things like similar sentence structures, bland, one-dimensional characters, and an over-reliance of forcing the message down the reader's throat make this an unenjoyable experience. And as someone who identifies as non-binary, the message of "all cis-het people suck!" is just as harmful as the reverse. 

The worst offense, though, is that in the writer's anger (and it's clear that she wrote this out of anger), she somehow found a way to make TERF's hatred make sense? For context: this is a world where anyone with too much testosterone turns into a zombie that rapes, kills, and eats anyone they smell estrogen on. Trans-women have to find ways to keep getting estrogen, or else they are doomed to the same fate.

In a zombie apocalypse, it would be dangerous and stupid to harbor someone with a bite simply because you don't want to seem like a bigot. Why, then, should TERFs allow trans-women into their compounds, to live near their groups, when at any moment they could turn into the dreaded man? TERFs are some of the worst scum on earth, and yet this book makes their fears and hatred legitimate.

It doesn't help that one of the main characters (a trans-woman) immediately starts fantasizing about raping the TERFs the moment she sees them because she's so horny, all the time. When this book isn't preaching at you, it's throwing rough sex in your face with no lead-up. Just a "Wanna fuck?" and there they go! Whether that's because of the genre or poor character-building, I don't know.

This book was clearly written in anger. If the author had any joy in this project, it would have been the sadistic glee of saying "all men are murderous rapists just waiting for an excuse" and being able to make them suffer. At least, that's how it reads, and that experience sucks.

To any writers out there: when you try to force your message too hard, not only does it feel like you're talking down to the reader, it leaves you open to "proving the point" of whoever you're opposing. And that can offer dangerous ammunition. This is a book TERFs could easily hold high and say, "Look! Even they know we're right! They're dangerous and should be kept away from us." And that is one of the worst things a book can do: hurt the very people it claims to represent.

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apolloann's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny 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

5.0

This was a hard book to read, but wow, was it great. With just enough humor sprinkled in to make the horror digestible, Manhunt left me feeling deeply unsettled. I'm newer to the horror genre, so this was a lot to handle, but the story and characters were so beautifully written that it made the discomfort worth it.  

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f18's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I figured this would be the best bet for a gender chromosome hormone apocalypse depiction that I could get behind, and it did address all the stuff that irks me about other versions (discusses how it affects trans people ofc, but also things like pcos). Unfortunately I didn't really find myself immersed in the writing but I'm not 100% sure why. I guess the style didn't click with me or maybe because it didn't focus as much on aspects of the genre I most connect to, like body horror. 

I constantly kept losing track of which POV the story was in at any time. I attributed this to the narrator not pausing long enough between scene breaks, but I see that has come up in reviews of the physical book as well. I think the character voices (not the narrator's but the author's ) blurred together. 

There's just something about the metaphor of
trans women surviving by eating cis men's testes
that is just so interesting but yeah... the book was okay, but I didn't love it like I was hoping for.

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bonni24's review

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For the first 70 or so pages, this was a fairly interesting book. After entering into the second section of the book, the plot becomes somewhat stagnant. There are also a lot more changes in perspective in the middle of the chapters and some of the sections in a certain perspective were quite brief.

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savazelena's review

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dark emotional funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Feels like it was written for me personally.

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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baxstarjonmarie's review

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

4.5

I enjoyed the story of this book. It was smart, interesting, sometimes funny in a cutting way. But I found it difficult to read nonetheless. At first I was mostly bothered by the way Gretchen wrote the books only fat character, which seemed primarily to make thin people (which I am not) uncomfortable. Like many others, I also found the perspective-shifting to be a bit jarring, though by the end I felt like it made some sense.

When I finished though, I realized that even greater than the extensive fat hatred, which felt more gratuitous than the graphic sex scenes... with the possible exception of the book's primary villain, everyone who gets a close third perspective in this book seems to utterly hate themselves. It's not that I find this unrealistic — the apocalypse has to be hell on mental health. It was just really difficult to read.

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