Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

29 reviews

madison_mls's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Leigh Bardugo hit it out of the park with her writing style in this one. I kind of liked how the book was narrated, it helped give the story the air of a Shakespearean tragedy in a way. This omnipotent narrator clueing us in on what each character is thinking with the way the first scene was set was unique. Also the ✨yearning✨! Bardugo sure knows how to write a touch starved man in the most beautiful way lmao. Overall a great read that was well paced and had fun characters to read!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Death

Moderate: Death of parent

allbettesareoff's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Leigh Bardugo makes yet another leap of genre impossible to predict but executed brilliantly. Whereas earlier in her career, she went from lighthearted YA fantasy to dark YA fantasy, then from young adult to gritty, new adult set in the modern day; the shift of 2024 goes from new adult to adult, from Yale and demons to late medieval Spain. 

 

Luzia Cotado is an orphaned, Jewish scullery maid in 1590s Madrid—a deadly place for those who do not swear fealty to the Catholic Church. And what’s more: she can perform small miracles. Her magic comes from her heritage, a secret she must always keep. But what’s the harm in a simple few words, a little lullaby, to unburn a loaf of bread? 

 

Guillén Santángel is not what he seems. A scorpion. A demon. A bodyguard from hell. A man. When his master assigns him to teach Luzia how to hone her magnificent skill and become the milagrera his master needs, he has no idea how much his impossible life is going to change. 

 

Readers of Ninth House and its sequel, Hell Bent, will be pleased with the essence of this novel. It’s dark, it’s witchy, it’s fiercely nuanced. But lovers of historical fantasy will enjoy the setting—the middle of King Philip II’s reign during the Spanish Inquisition. 

 

Bardugo tackles religious persecution, gender inequality, and sexual liberation with the help of her fleshed characters and their constant life-threatening situations. She builds tension with tools quite underused in fantasy, but reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s in The Secret History. Her semi-omniscient narrator looms like a god in a seemingly godless world, giving readers glimpses into characters whose minds we have no right to see and sweeping the thoughts of those we expect to read out into the distance, drawing near and far as she pleases. 

 

In a word, The Familiar is a milagrito. A little miracle. So many tiny moving parts had to fit together in just the right way to make this story work, but it works. Readers will grow to care for Luzia’s abusive boss, root for couples they’d never expect, and feel the scorpion sting of betrayals too well-conceived to fathom. 

 

Not for the squeamish or fans of closed-door romance, The Familiar bends rules and breaks preconceptions. Bardugo’s first foray into adult fiction sets shelves ablaze. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Sexual content, Antisemitism, and Religious bigotry

celery's review against another edition

dark funny hopeful informative inspiring tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation

rchulin1's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

3.25

Ehh kind of dull the plot was interesting that characters not so much

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Hate crime, Infertility, Infidelity, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

cuteasamuntin's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective 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? Yes

5.0

Despite a bit of a slow start, I found metaphorically chewing glass over this story by the end. Leigh Bardugo writes a solid YA, but her adult fantasy is where her gift truly shines. This was a tense, moving mix of real and terrible history with magics big and small that assembled into a mosaic of flawed people reaching for something more.

I would recommend this book to fans of other historic-period urban fantasy, particularly the works of Naomi Novik, Allison Saft, and Helene Wecker.

For my fellow Jewish readers and Muslim readers, just a heads-up that you may want to be a little more emotionally prepared for this one, as the Alhambra Decree, Reconquista, Inquisition, and the persecution of moriscos and conversos are all intimately tied to the novel’s setting and characterizations.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Antisemitism, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Confinement, Death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Islamophobia, and Grief

Minor: Body horror, Genocide, Hate crime, Infertility, Mental illness, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Police brutality, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Classism

ifyouhavebooks's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Sexual assault

fkshg8465's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful sad 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? Yes

3.0

3.5: didn’t love the writing, so a 3 for that, but liked the story, and so a 4 for that.

This is my first historical novel set during the Spanish Inquisition. There’s a lot of mysticism within Jewish traditions, so I can see some of the magic and supernatural powers within the story may have come from this background, but my knowledge is too limited to be able to trace any of it. I like that it ultimately mattered little as to the origin of their powers because the people who had actual power within the social hierarchy were so greedy and abusive that their power was really what mattered in the story. Seems like a parallel to today’s political parties. Then again, is probably universally applicable across all time spans.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infertility, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

danaaliyalevinson's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-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

4.5

I’m Jewish and have Sephardi ancestors who fled Portugal thanks to the Inquisition. So immediately this book was right up my alley. I felt that the prose had a certain ineffable Jewishness to it. There was a poeticism and this feeling of the weight of history, and worlds being destroyed and created, that seeped through every line.

The magic system. The way language and connection to heritage was used to control the world around Luzia was so beautiful.

I also found the characters incredibly compelling. And the chemistry between Luzia and Santángel was beautiful and also poetic. I felt the book in its entirety did a very good job of balancing really wonderful character development with more plot driven storytelling.

My only criticism is that it felt

that Luzia’s connection to her Jewishness was a dangling character thread that was never fully resolved. I kept expecting her to eventually come to identify with her Jewishness in the way that her Aunt Hualit did. Or at the very least, when she transported herself and Santángel toward the end, that she would transport them to Salonika, or even Ottoman Israel-Palestine, to live among Jews. There was some implication of this with the oranges, but it wasn’t explicit.

If that character thread had been better wrapped up, this would’ve been a 5 star read for me. But it was still wonderful.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Antisemitism, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

ellanarose's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring sad 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Sexual content and War

desiderium_incarnate's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

This book was a tad confusing to me. Not in regards to what was happening, but how I feel and think about it. Talking about and discussing it helped.

It seems like Leigh Bardugo was experimenting with this one. That is of course not bad per se, but I think her (assumed) goals got in the way of her strengths. It seemed like she wrote about history to honor something and introduced a bit of magic in it because she likes it but with wanting to stick to the facts that much, she came in the way of what she does best, which is of course creating her own in depth magic systems, writing about found family and getting you to care for the people, no matter how morally grey they might be. This was sadly not the case here. Her magical system was shallow at best and with no clear rules and random power highs, lows and ways to exercise it arbitrary and illogical at worst. The first half of the book was sadly just boring and you were left waiting for the shoe to drop and something grand to happen, which sadly, did not happen as Leigh tried to stick to the history. The love story was unexpected, surprisingly explicit and weird, if you consider the age difference. I did not like the ending because it just isn't an end in my opinion. The biggest surprise and I guess character growth was Valentina, she really stole the whole book. I'm glad she found her back bone and her desire and her calling I guess. A personal disappointment for me was the  lackluster heist time and I didn't like the layered intrigues and court politics as well. 

The writing was still nice though. Some of her sentences I feel she wrote because she thought they would be deep and connect with people, but that just didn't work a lot because they felt wrong and forced. There was a lot of anger in this book and literally not one male character was any good, which was super sad. I am a bit disappointed but I also recognize that Leigh was probably experimenting and I feel like her heart wasn't in it, so I am still excited for her next books.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Hate crime, Infertility, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism