Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

Everything The Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

25 reviews

theochick's review against another edition

challenging dark

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

1.0

This book had an interesting concept and incredibly poor execution. Definitely mind the content warnings (I probably missed some)! Prologue sets up a way more enjoyable/fun story than the book delivers which I think makes it even more disappointing 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Grief, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Car accident

Minor: Pedophilia

jessereadsthings's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Hate crime, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Child abuse and Pedophilia

heartofhorrors's review against another edition

challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

Moderate: Ableism, Biphobia, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

dexdar's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

1.0

Poorly written.  Lots of things that didn’t make sense in the context of the story. Also just not my type of book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Homophobia, and Rape

silvermusic10's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

1.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Homophobia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Religious bigotry

sinisterbeard's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

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

2.5

Eric LaRocca is a potentially great novelist who's badly in need of a trad publishing editor. This reads like a great first draft, full of grammatical errors, fancy words used incorrectly, muddy plotting, and frustratingly foolish characters who take very little action and achieve nothing. With a year's polish at a proper house, this could have been Salem's Lot good, which is the book it most reminds me off. As it is, it's deeply frustrating.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia and Rape

Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Child abuse, and Kidnapping

Minor: Child death, Miscarriage, and Car accident

ashlislibrary's review against another edition

dark emotional tense fast-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? Yes

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Homophobia, and Rape

bookishpriest's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

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

1.5

This felt like two half-conceived short stories stitched together for the sake of making something long enough to publish as a book.  Two parallel storylines that suddenly meet up in the last 10% of the book. Some of the ideas were interesting, but fell flat and didn't recieve their due. There were references to Sandman and Needful Things that could have been very compelling but did not deliver.

There were several depictions of extreme violence and homophobia (check the trigger warnings before reading!) that did very little for the story or character advancement,

didn't get much treatment and, in the end, were hand-waved away without any real follow-up.

This felt to me like a version of trauma porn and not at all helpful.

Whatever the author's intent, I couldn't find it in these pages and it was disappointing enough that I won't be looking for more of their work.

The narration of the audiobook is well done and a pleasant listen.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Death, and Death of parent

Minor: Pedophilia

mraible18's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

2.0

Giving this 2 stars instead of 1 because I saw some potential in the premise and also honestly because I liked the audiobook narrator. This is the first of Eric LaRocca’s books I’ve read and I still might give one of their others a try, but was not a fan of this one. 

I get that horror can be nature be very violent. One of my favorite horror novels is insanely, grotesquely violent, not necessarily in dissimilar ways from this book. But all of the violence and the trauma here felt entirely gratuitous,

especially once the trauma is literally erased from the character’s mind like nothing happened??

I didn’t care about any of the characters because the over usage of similes kept me at a distance or zoning out on what was actually happening. I found myself listening to the audio book on a super high speed just to get through the rest of the novella because I was bored.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Islamophobia, and Car accident

Moderate: Ableism, Gore, Kidnapping, and Religious bigotry

mindysbookjourney's review against another edition

challenging dark tense fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Homophobia, Rape, and Grief

Minor: Ableism, Biphobia, Child death, Death, Pedophilia, and Car accident