Reviews with content warning for Violence - Slated

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Slated by Teri Terry

7 reviews

bones_jackson's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A história em si é legal, mas acho que a Amy foi retratada muito como tansa, e ela só ganha juízo lá pro final do livro, o Ben teve uma mudança de ideias e personalidade que parece meio forçado e a personagem principal faz umas decisões muito questionáveis e muitas vezes burras.

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junglejelly's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Re-reading this as an adult I see why I enjoyed it so much as a teenager.

Terry's writing is brilliant. She really gets how complex humans are with our emotions, relationships and expectations others put on us.

I can't wait to read the other two books in the series.

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sleepy_witch's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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fullybookedlola's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It feels like a weird book to me. I'm glad I finally picked it up after having it for two or even more years lying on my bookshelf. But it took me a while to get into it, and sometimes it even felt out of place for what I was reading. I'm curious to know what comes next, so I'm going to pick up the next books, but if I wasn't reading this for a challenge I might have DNF'd it until it felt better to read.

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I originally gave Slated 4.5 stars but after reading the other books in the trilogy, I would rather give 4 stars since the series becomes so much better with later entries. When I read Slated for the first time, I must’ve been 13 or 14 and obviously time has passed, and I could barely remember anything. This made the series even more exiting because I had some distanced feeling of familiarity but not much more.

Slated is your classical early-2010s teen dystopia insofar as we have different societal groups and a big evil government that is oppressing teenagers. The main character Kyla got slated because she was supposedly a criminal, meaning all her memory got wiped away. But of course, Kyla is special, and the slating didn’t work correctly so she remembers things that she shouldn’t remember. The first book of the series mainly introduces us to the setting and the characters and together with Kyla, we try to figure out the mystery around why she’s been slated.

The problem is that I can’t say for sure if the plot is predictable or not since I don’t know how much of the plot I’ve remembered vs. how much I’ve predicted. But I had the feeling that some moments are more predictable. But that was not a problem for me because for some strange reasons I liked the plot so much, even if it’s nothing too special. Maybe it was because the life of Kyla was so structured? And I generally like books where no character is telling the truth and the MC has to figure out who she can trust and who not. It takes some time until the pace picks up; this only happens in the last hundred pages. But then, the story becomes quite engaging and interesting. The ending is so good as well that you instantly want to know what happens next.

I also really liked the dystopian side of the story. The dystopian elements weren't too much that it became unrealistic, but just the right amount that it didn’t feel flat. It is also quite questionable and lets you think about the topics around punishment and reintegration of criminals into society. It becomes clear that the system in Kyla’s world is so morally wrong; especially the point that some people get slated because they have such a deep trauma so that they had otherwise no “use” again for society disturbed me. It funny as well how the book predicted Brexit; of course, Brexit didn’t have the same consequences, but I still like it.

I’ve read Dark Blue Rising by the same author last year and I was kinda disappointed by it, especially by the writing style and the unexciting plot. I was afraid that there would be the same problems in Slated – but luckily, they weren’t. The writing style was so much better and tense here which surprises me since the book is almost ten years older? There are different translators for those series, so maybe that is reason and it’s not the author?

The only thing that was not so great about this novel were the characters. Generally, the character constellation felt quite cliché and the characters themselves are still a bit flat here. Our MC Kyla is the classical YA protagonist. She’s something special, is good at everything, and all the boys are into her even though she doesn’t have any redeeming qualities. I still strangely like her and rooted for her to figure out the secret around her true identity.

Talking about boys, the love story is really not great. There is literally no chemistry between Ben and Kyla and Kyla’s feelings towards him are not depicted in a way that is understandable. Moreover, there’s a lack of likable female characters in the story – like I said, classic teen dystopia. Some of their irrational behaviour is explained in later entries of the series, but others are just mean to each other because they are both girls.

One a last side note, this book talks about a cure for autism as if it was something utopian that no autistic people exist anymore. This idea that autism is something that needs to be cured is extremely offensive and I wish this would’ve been reflected on. Nevertheless, Slated had everything that I wish for in a teen dystopia, besides deep characters. But this luckily changes with later entries in the series.

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rayne_1906's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

3 hours 15 minutes - This is a very gripping read, I read it basically in one setting. While there isn't necessarily a huge amount of plot events occurring, the steady unravelling of information is done well to hook you in. The characters are very believable, and its easy to get attached to them. However, I did not like the formatting of the dreams, the italics made it hard to read and I know that's not a complaint of the writing itself, but it still had somewhat of an impact on the reading experience. Also the very end of the book was a little too confusing to be a cliff-hanger - it was sort of hard to figure out what was happening and whether there was somebody else there or just in her head. The last 10 or so pages could have been stronger. Aside from that, the book was well written and I enjoyed reading it.

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iiselin's review against another edition

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mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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