Reviews with content warning for Blood - In the Vanishers' Palace

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

In the Vanishers' Palace by Aliette de Bodard

8 reviews

kaiyakaiyo's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

3.0

done! I’ve decided that I really dislike novellas. they always feel rushed, incomplete. there is soooo much going on here, but it feels like the author just shoves info into our brain and starts the story. there was also a lot of repetitive language; how many times can one person write the word “broken” before it loses meaning. I didn’t have time to love any of the characters, or even dislike any. they were such bare sketches that I felt nothing as they moved through the story. maybe novella-lovers like the shortcut to action, but I just like buildup, showing vs telling. probably a me issue

pacing and char development issues aside, this is a really interesting world that could be great with some building, and girl/dragon is my new favorite sapphic trope. the kisses were A1!!!! would’ve liked some more logistics on how a dragon lady fucks a regular lady but maybe im just unimaginative. anyways, this took me a while to get into, and even longer to finish; not sure why i keep picking up novellas. last time, for real!

Content Warnings

annamorgan27's review

Go to review page

mysterious 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

3.0

Content Warnings

peachani's review

Go to review page

tense medium-paced

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

2.0

Content Warnings

mandkips's review

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-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? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

strange_little_ranger's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark hopeful 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? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

nmcannon's review

Go to review page

emotional mysterious reflective slow-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

My 2021 Reading Challenge is going to be super long mlm doorstoppers and bite-sized wlw novellas, it seems. I'm on a roll with these. I picked up In the Vanishers' Palace for a couple reasons: (1) my wife just read it and loved it; (2) the new Trash & Treasures podcast is doing an episode on it, and hey, it's nice to read along; and (3) I've been meaning to read Aliette de Bodard since forever!

At around 145 pages, In the Vanishers’ Palace tells a complex story. In a magical Vietnam reeling from the invasion, and then abrupt disappearance of, the alien Vanishers, Yên is a failed scholar who returned to her village in disgrace. She’s been awkwardly shuffled off to her assist her aging mother in healing and educating the village’s youth, but both of them live under constant threat. Once the village’s elders deem someone has lost their “use” to the village, the person is sacrificed to the Vanishers’ constructs, bloodthirsty inventions who haunt the forest. If that isn’t bad enough, pollution and magical retroviruses run rampant. When the headwoman’s daughter is infected, Yên’s mother calls upon a dragon spirit to heal her, but the dragon demands a sacrifice too. Volunteering as tribute, Yên is whisked away to a palace out of an M.C. Escher painting, and the dragon, Vu Côn, asks her to…tutor her children. Yên’s surprised, to say the least. It doesn’t help that Vu Côn is super attractive.

Reading the other reviews, many readers remark that the world is too complicated or confusing. I will admit it’s a lot, especially for so short a book. However, while I wasn’t always sure exactly what a Vanisher is or why the palace is Like That, I always knew what elements stood for. Vanishers are colonizers, and the repercussions of them are metaphors for colonization’s devastating after-effects. I’m unsure if something went sideways with the book’s marketing, but some readers went in expecting a story exactly like the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie but queer, and no, this is much more complicated that that. And also not YA. If a reader is patient, everything’s explained in more clear terms later in the novella.

As for my own reading experience, I’m a little bit obsessed with de Bodard’s writing style. Her words are at once under-stated, but evocative. She somehow made me literally nauseous and dizzy with her descriptions of the palace, just like Yên is. The blending of the hard science and linguistic magic is something I haven’t seen so well-done since G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen, and Wilson’s one of my favorite authors. If I had a quibble, Yên and Vu Côn seemed to spend more time in denial than being in love. Then again, that’s more my personal preference when it comes to romance.

All in all, I love In the Vanishers’ Palace. A masterfully told tale that knows the story it wants to tell. I’m already reading Fireheart Tiger and very excited to delve deeper into de Bodard’s bibliography.

Content Warnings

cryssalia's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

dytiscusfriend's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Very distressing story and setting. Post-apocolyptic and somewhat post-colonial. Story involves kidnapping, Beauty & the Beast-style "romance," and very serious medical/illness related themes. I rarely feel that a book is paced too fast for me but I often felt myself wishing we spent more time getting to know the characters and letting the story play out at less of a breakneck pace. Gorgeous imagery.

Recommend for fans of queer romance enemy to lovers novels.

Content Warnings

More...