Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman

26 reviews

shoshin's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious 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

4.25

I enjoy Gaiman's stories most of the time, but misogyny slips out here and there when he's trying to be gritty. Ruins my enjoyment. I catch myself wishing a woman had written them instead.

I also find the "troubles" bit in the middle difficult to understand--doesn't seem to further Odin's/Loki's purposes that are central to the story. No real reason to kill some of the gods who were killed. If there had been some established enmity between them and Odin or Loki, sure, but I didn't see anything. 

Encapsulating both these complaints: Balquis' character seems to exist completely for proposes that don't further the narrative: adding a sex(ist) scene and dying during the "troubles" part. I could be convinced there's narrative value there, but I'm not seeing it at the moment.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Infidelity, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Car accident, Abandonment, and War

Minor: Rape and Fire/Fire injury

badgerwaffles's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexual content, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual assault and Slavery

Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death

bel017's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Death

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Confinement, Gore, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, War, and Injury/Injury detail

justmys's review against another edition

medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Child death, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Blood, Excrement, and Vomit

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child abuse, Confinement, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Sexual harassment

raelinton's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I really enjoyed the book though it was meandering and not a lot happens until the last quarter. The world is interesting enough that you don't really mind. (Worth noting that NG did say in the introduction that he wanted to write a novel that was meandering and weird, which he did.)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Racism, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Blood, and Colonisation

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Infidelity, Violence, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and War

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

sreddous's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

This is a tricky one. I actually remember saying out loud to friends as I was reading this, “I don’t think there’s a whole ton of description, and usually I get annoyed if books expect me to ‘do too much of the work’ – yet I can totally imagine everything that’s happening here.” Neil Gaiman’s writing and dialogue are so good that even though this book is LONG and the pacing is often slow and hard to follow, it was so easy to “see the crazy stuff that was happening through Shadow’s eyes” that I felt totally immersed pretty much the whole time. 

I think it’s a unique balance – Shadow doesn’t have a “super strong personality” as a POV character, which could be annoying...but, no, instead, the way I interpreted it, it just made it easy to see him as someone who’s, like, “yup, the gods sure are up to some wacky things, aren’t they?” and… yeah, I’m along for the ride too, what will these wacky gods cook up next??

So that’s why I call this book a five-star experience for me. It felt…strangely realistic and calming!

I think if there are any things I wished could have more space instead of maybe some of the slower plot points, it’s that I wish we had more locations visited in the USA – we spend a whole lot of time in the Midwest, and that’s fine, but it’s such a big country with different pockets of immigrants bringing different gods to different areas, it would have been fun to discover tiny little towns in other places too.

I also found myself asking questions like, “well, the USA isn’t the only capitalist/hyper-modern/greedy country with a large immigrant population – did Greek immigrants bring versions of their gods to Australia, so there are Greek gods in Greece, the USA, and Australia?” And we get a glimpse of that formula being possible when Shadow is in Iceland, so I’m glad to have that touched on, even though the book does indeed focus on, well, the American Gods and how they behave in the USA specifically. So it’s fine.

This is a tricky, complicated topic with tricky, complicated metaphors. But, it sure did leave me thinking and re-imagining scenes.

Content warnings: graphic descriptions of animal abuse and death, sex-related violence, gore

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore, and Sexual violence

szote's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Racism, Rape, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Car accident, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

fayeferre's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense 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? Yes

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

ronan_lesh's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny mysterious slow-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexual content, and Murder

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Child death, Infidelity, Rape, Violence, Grief, and Death of parent

Minor: Self harm and Suicide

corriejn's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

4.5

I thought most of this book was great, but certain sections (no spoilers) dragged out far too long. I did listen to the ~12k words longer, original author's cut edition, so maybe those were some of the sections that were cut down a good bit for the original publishing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Confinement, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Excrement, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, and War