Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

69 reviews

silverhill's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Animal cruelty, Confinement, Stalking, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Classism, Colonisation, Bullying, Abandonment, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Death of parent, Self harm, Pregnancy, and Mental illness

kat_smith24's review

adventurous emotional mysterious 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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Blood, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, Gun violence, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Abandonment, Death of parent, and Self harm

joannabren's review

adventurous emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Forced institutionalization, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Confinement

milenaaax98's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious 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 have never annotated and underlined so many things in a fiction book. This book is written so beautifully, some sentences make your heart ache. We should all try to be like January

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Death, Violence, Gaslighting, Confinement, and Abandonment

Moderate: Gun violence and Animal cruelty

spineofthesaurus's review

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Blood, Body horror, Classism, Colonisation, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Xenophobia, and Cultural appropriation

Moderate: Alcohol, Death, Drug use, Murder, Pregnancy, Torture, Ableism, Gun violence, Sexual harassment, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Slavery, Abortion, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Stalking

321zeggy's review against another edition

adventurous emotional

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Forced institutionalization, Confinement, and Gun violence

Moderate: Grief, Blood, Classism, Death, Racism, Violence, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Pregnancy and Sexual harassment

disneydamsel1's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-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? It's complicated

2.5

The beginning is broken up in an odd way and there are numerous pacing issues. I liked the concept and the world building, but the characters weren't very interesting. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement

athryn's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

3.5

This took a while to get to the actual adventure part, which was where it really took off for me. Before that, there's quite a bit of trauma to go through, and I will say that it made it so I had to put it down quite a bit. I thought the interspersing of the two narratives to be pretty interesting. I thought this was a good spin on a concept done by a few other people recently.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Mental illness, Animal cruelty, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Self harm, Sexism, Misogyny, Violence, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Child abuse, Classism, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Gaslighting, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, and Confinement

Minor: Grief, Alcohol, Pregnancy, and War

tangleroot_eli's review

adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

Big mixed feels about this one. I like so many things about it: January herself; Ade and Yule Ian's story - actually, I found all of the characters fairly well written.

But I struggled with the pacing, especially in the first 2/3. While January is an interesting character, her story kept me less engrossed than Ade and Yule Ian's, even though she's ostensibly the main character. For me, the story really starts in the last third, when everyone's threads come together.

Ultimately, my biggest disappointment with the book is the the conventionality of Harrow's other worlds. They're "completely different from our own," but in very limited ways. Where were the worlds with people but without capitalism? Where were the worlds where people weren't "somewhere in between [men and women]" but just people? The refuges in Arcadia clearly include same-sex couples; were none of them looking for a world where that was the norm, or did the idea of such a world not occur to Harrow? It often seems like, in Harrow's mind, the best a queer and/or BIPOC character can hope for is a world where their identity is ignored or, at best, tolerated, rather than one where it's celebrated.

In 2001, astronauts carry paper notebooks because Arthur C Clarke, however vast his imagination, couldn't conceive of computers so small they fit in the palm of our hands. In The Ten Thousand Doors of January, all worlds, no matter how superficially different from our own, at core are quite similar, because Alix E Harrow, however vast her imagination, couldn't conceive of what real, fundamental difference looks like.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Colonisation, Racism, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Death, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Grief, Forced institutionalization, Child abuse, Classism, Medical content, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Pregnancy, Gun violence, and Racial slurs

Minor: Police brutality and War

ettegoom's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

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

5.0

I loved this! I think that Alix Harrow might be one of my favourite authors.

Second time reading this, because I accidentally added it to my 'to read' pile twice.  I started it, realised I had already read it, and vaguely recalled the plot. The story and the writing was lovely enough that this did not, in any way detract from the second reading, which I found just as enjoyable as I did the first time. 
I've read several books by this author now, and this is one of my favourites. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement and Animal cruelty

the dog is fine