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cadybooks's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Body shaming, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Blood, Body horror, Fatphobia, Torture, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Kidnapping, Police brutality, Suicide, and Violence
sunniva174's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Kidnapping, Suicide, and Murder
Moderate: Car accident and Death of parent
Minor: Fatphobia, Torture, Genocide, Sexual content, and Fire/Fire injury
hales_1243's review against another edition
- 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? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Kidnapping, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Death of parent, Murder, Suicide, Confinement, Gun violence, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Animal cruelty, Fatphobia, Grief, Blood, Death, Genocide, Torture, and Gore
tinysierra's review against another edition
4.25
Like the first book, when the plot started to feel mundane, some kind of twist would happen to make the story pick up again.
I liked getting to see more into the Scythedom and the Thunderhead. All the threads of the plot and characters weave to create such an interesting story.
The romance takes a very back burner, but it’s still vaguely there.
Graphic: Gun violence, Murder, Violence, Death of parent, Blood, Body horror, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicide
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Religious bigotry
Minor: Fatphobia
adrienanthony's review against another edition
- 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
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Murder, Gore, Body horror, Suicide, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, and Torture
Moderate: Fatphobia, Death of parent, and Body shaming
ggcd1981's review against another edition
- 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
4.25
Graphic: Confinement, Animal cruelty, Death, Fatphobia, Torture, Kidnapping, Murder, Suicide, Violence, Genocide, and Grief
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Xenophobia
crunchycrystals's review
3.5
i still think the most interesting part of the whole book was citra/ anastasia. she was my favorite in the first book and she still is now. i liked seeing the changes she was making to the scythedom and all the politics within it.
not sure what i think of the ending. i liked the thunderhead being a character and i liked its reaction to the ending. i feel like my thoughts about this book will change based on what happens in the next book but i don't know until i read it.
the only thing i TRULY hate about this book is the stupid chapter where rowan kills the canadian racist who wants to commit a genocide against an indigenous tribe. that is way too close to the actual history of canada and their relationship with indigenous people to be given the explanation of "it's because he fell in love with a woman but he couldn't marry her so she married another man from her tribe". this makes me so angry because the racism itself is almost too realistic to canada but the explanation is so far removed from reality. that's not why people are racist. that chapter was so stupid i swear to god if you deleted the whole thing nothing would've changed.
and like clearly what the author was going for was that the scythe used to be good but became evil. just say he had some prejudiced beliefs and fell in with a crowd that radicalized him to the point that he was murdering indigenous tribes he hated for the reason HE HIMSELF SAID IN THE CHAPTER. it was already in the narration you could've just. oh my god this chapter makes me too angry. the only thing i liked about that chapter was showing another way the scythedom is broken by allowing people to have racially motivated gleanings and get away with it because they fall under "other".
edit this is going down from 3.75 to 3.5 since i DNFd the third book. i just didn't like it lol and when i think about this book i just think about how excited i was to see where the world would be going with anastasia's plans for the future and then just. all of that potential went away with the cliffhanger at the end
Graphic: Murder, Violence, Death, and Racism
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Fatphobia
semogecarg's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Murder, Suicide, and Gore
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Body horror, Fatphobia, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Abandonment
Minor: Cursing and Sexual content
booksthatburn's review
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Just like the first one, this book has a very high body count and no character is safe. I'm not saying your favorite character will die, but be prepared. The antagonist is great in a truly terrible way, I'm impressed by his depravity but also at how the author shields the reader so that we get the MC's reaction to the villain's awfulness, but we're insulated from some of how terrible it is. It's always very clear what happened, and that's it's awful, but because the MCs don't have the same language we do surrounding trauma and death there are in-universe euphemisms and language gaps which make it possible to read and enjoy what could (in the hands of a less caring author) feel like wading through blood to get to the plot. I was genuinely shocked by one of the plot twists, variously stressed out, and I hope the villain gets a comeuppance in the last book of the trilogy because goddamn I hate him, but I loved this book. It's grim and fantastic, pondering moral quandaries and the nature of existence via the quotes beginning each chapter, while also pairing that rumination with action in really great ways.
Now I'll get to my usual book two check. It does wrap up a character arc left hanging from the first book. Oh boy does it wrap it up, ummmm, yeah, not saying any more about that. I didn't cry, it's fine, I repeat that the villain is hateable and terrible. There is a really cool storyline which starts in this book and wasn't present in the first one. I love the MC at the heart of it, and I'm very excited to see what happens with him in the third book. I think it's accurate to say something major was introduced and resolved within this volume, several things, actually. There might be more to discuss with them in the third book, but if we don't come back to them I'm content with their resolutions. There are so many things to be addressed in the third book, it's a trilogy so I feel pretty good about the balance of resolution and open-endedness in this middle book. It kept some of the POV characters from the first book as well as adding a couple of new ones, their voices are pretty distinct from the recurring narrators (each of whom are very different from each other). It was never confusing when the narrator changed for me, their settings, tone, and motivations are separate enough that it was easy to keep track. And finally, I don't think this would make much sense if you tried to start with this one. It's a futuristic setting with a lot of specific language which was naturally explained in the first book, and trying to start here without that grounding would probably be very frustrating. However, if you vaguely remembered those terms but just didn't remember what happened in the first book (maybe if it had been a while between reading them) you'd probably be fine, the connections with the first book are subtly referenced enough to keep that continuity without feeling like they're rehashing anything.
I mentioned fatphobia in the first book, so I'm circling back in the second one to examine how it's addressed here. I think the portrayal of fatphobia is intended as one of the subtle (and occasionally not so subtle) ways to show that the society isn't, in fact, perfect. It's coupled here with some petty politics and a little bit of verbal bullying. I think it works, it's pretty mild but it gets the point across.
I love the narrator for the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, getting their perspective was great and it added to the story and the world-building in a different way that the quotes from the first book did.
Graphic: Death and Body horror
Moderate: Child death, Gore, Genocide, Gun violence, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Fatphobia and Body shaming
CW for fatphobia, body horror, gore, animal attack, genocide, gun violence, violence, child death, suicide, major character death, death.